XLIV. REGARD FOR THE LOWER ANIMALS…

XLIV. REGARD FOR THE LOWER ANIMALS

MEN'S conduct towards the lower animals is frequently a subject of moral valuation.

Totem animals must be treated with deference by those who bear their names, and animals generally regarded as divine must be respected by all; of this more will be said in a subsequent chapter.[1] Among various peoples the members of certain animal species must not be killed, because they are considered to be receptacles for the souls of departed men,[2] or because the species is believed to have originated through a transformation of men into animals.[3] The Dyaks of Borneo have a superstitious dread of killing orang-utans, being of opinion that these apes are men who went to live in the forest and abstain from speaking merely in order to be exempt from paying taxes.[4] The Moors consider it wrong to kill a monkey, because the monkey was once a man whom God changed into his present shape as a punishment for the sin he committed by performing his ablutions with milk; and they would never do harm to a stork, because, as they say, the stork was originally a judge, who passed unjust sentences upon his fellow creatures and therefore became what he is. They also account it a sin to kill a swallow or a pigeon, a white spider or a bee, because they regard them as holy. Other creatures, again, are spared by the Moors because they {491} appear uncanny or are suspected of being evil spirits in disguise. It is believed that anybody who kills a raven easily goes mad and that he who kills a toad will get fever or die; and no Moor would dare to hit a cat or a dog in the dark, since it seems very doubtful what kind of being it really is. Superstitions of this sort are world-wide.]

[Footnote 1: Infra, on Duties to Gods.]

[Footnote 2: Infra, p. 516 sq.]

[Footnote 3: See Meiners, Allgemeine Geschichte der Religionen, i. 213 sqq.]

[Footnote 4: Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. 57.]

It is a common belief among uncultured peoples that a person who slays an animal is exposed to the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other creatures belonging to the same species.[5] Hence, as Sir J. G. Frazer has shown, the savage often makes it a rule to spare the lives of those animals which he has no pressing motive for killing, at least such fierce and dangerous ones as are likely to exact a bloody revenge for the slaughter of any of their kind; and when, for some reason or other, he overcomes his superstitious scruples and takes the life of the beast, he is anxious to appease the victim and its kindred by testifying his respect for them, or making apologies, or trying to conceal his share in procuring the death of the animal, or promising that its remains will be honourably treated.[6] The Stiêns of Cambodia, for instance, who believe that animals have souls which wander about after death, ask pardon when they have killed one, lest its soul should visit and torment them; and they also offer it sacrifices proportioned to the strength and size of the animal.[7] When a party of Koriaks have killed a bear or a wolf, they skin the beast, dress one of their family in the skin, and dance round the skin-clad man, saying that it was not they who killed the animal but someone else, by preference a Russian.[8] The Eskimo about Behring Strait maintain that the dead bodies of various animals must be treated very carefully by the hunter who obtains them, so that their shades may not be offended and bring bad luck or even death upon him or his people.[9]

[Footnote 5: Supra, i. 258.]

[Footnote 6: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 389 sqq.]

[Footnote 7: Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China_, i. 252.]

[Footnote 8: Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 26.]

[Footnote 9: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 438.]

{492} The savage, moreover, desires to keep on good terms with animals which, without being feared, are either eaten or valued for their skins. Hence, when he captures one, he shows such deference for it as may be necessary for inducing its fellows to come and be killed also.[10] Alaskan hunters preserve the bones of sables and beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and then bury them carefully, lest the spirits which look after these species should consider that "they are regarded with contempt and hence no more should be killed or trapped."[11] The Thompson River Indians of British Columbia said that when a deer was killed its fellows would be well pleased if the hunters butchered the animal nicely and cleanly.[12] The Hurons refrained from throwing fish bones into the fire, lest the souls of the fish should go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be caught, since, if they were, their own bones would also be burned.[13] Some savages respect the bones of the animals which they eat because they believe that the bones, if preserved, will, in the course of time, be reclothed with flesh and the animal thus come to life again.[14]

[Footnote 10: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 403 sqq.]

[Footnote 11: Dall, Alaska, p. 89.]

[Footnote 12: Teit, 'Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' in Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 'Anthropology,' i. 346.]

[Footnote 13: Sagard, Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons, p. 255.]

[Footnote 14: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 415 sqq.]

Besides the creatures which primitive man treats with respect because he dreads their strength and ferocity or on account of the benefits he expects from them, there is yet a third class of animate beings which he sometimes deems it necessary to conciliate, namely, vermin that infest the crops.[15] Among the Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep sparrows from the corn, the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed backwards over his head, saying, "That is for you, sparrows."[16] And of the Drâvidian tribes of Mirzapur we are told that, when locusts threaten to eat up the fruits of the earth, the people catch one, decorate its head with a spot of red {493} lead, salaam to it, and let it go; after which civilities the whole flight immediately departs.[17]

[Footnote 15: Ibid. ii. 422 sqq.]

[Footnote 16: Heinrich, quoted ibid. ii. 423.]

[Footnote 17: Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_, ii. 303.]

Domestic animals are frequently objects of superstitious reverence.[18] They are expected to reward masters who treat them well, whereas those who harm them are believed to expose themselves to their revenge. Among the Eskimo about Behring Strait dogs are never beaten for biting people, lest the inua or shade of the dog should become angry and prevent the wound from healing.[19] Butchers are often regarded as unclean, and the original reason for this was in all probability the idea that they were haunted by the spirits of the animals they had slain. Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands it was unlawful for anybody but professional butchers to kill cattle, and a butcher was forbidden to enter other persons' houses, to touch their property, and to keep company with any one not of his own trade.[20] In Morocco a butcher, like a manslayer, is thought to be haunted by jnûn (jinn), and it seems that in this case also the notion of haunting jnûn has replaced an earlier belief in troublesome ghosts.[21] So, too, the ancient Troglodytes of East Africa, who derived their whole sustenance from their flocks and herds, are said to have looked upon butchers as unclean.[22] In the rural districts of Japan it is believed that a butcher will have a cripple among his descendants.[23]

[Footnote 18: See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 296 sqq.]

[Footnote 19: Nelson, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xviii. 435.]

[Footnote 20: Abreu de Galindo, _History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands_, p. 71 sq. Bory de St. Vincent, Essais sur les Isles Fortunées, p. 103 sq.]

[Footnote 21: Cf. supra, i. 378.]

[Footnote 22: Robertson Smith, op. cit. p. 296 sq.]

[Footnote 23: Griffis, Mikado's Empire, p. 472.]

How far ideas of this sort may account for the great disinclination of many peoples to kill their cattle, it is impossible to say; but they certainly do not constitute the only motive. We have noticed above that pastoral tribes are unwilling to reduce their herds and agricultural peoples to kill the ploughing ox, because this would imply {494} loss of valuable property.[24] And apart from economic considerations, we may assume that feelings of genuine sympathy also induce them to treat their animals with kindness. The altruistic sentiment has not necessarily reference to members of the same species only; of this we find instances even among animals in confinement and domesticated animals, which frequently become attached to individuals of a different species with whom they live together.[25] And the savage feels himself much more closely related to the animal world than does his civilised fellow creature; indeed, as we have seen, he habitually obliterates the boundaries between man and beast and regards all animals as practically on a footing of equality with himself.[26] Among the pastoral races of Africa the men delight in attending their cattle, and spend much time in ornamenting and adorning them; the herdsman knows every beast in his herd, calls it by its name, and affectionately observes all its peculiarities.[27] Of the Bahima, a cow tribe in Uganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe tells us that the men form warm attachments for their cattle; some of them love the animals like children, pet and coax them, talk to them, and weep over their ailments, and should a favourite die their grief is so extreme that it sometimes leads to suicide.[28] The mythical founder of the kingdom of Uganda, Kintu, is said to have been so humane and averse from the sight of blood, that "even cattle killed for necessary food were slaughtered at some distance from his dwelling."[29] But cattle are not the only dumb creatures that excite tender feelings in the bosom of a savage. The For tribe of Central Africa regard it as a characteristic of a good man to be kind to animals in general, and consider it wicked to be otherwise.[30] Concerning the Eastern Central Africans Mr. {495} Macdonald writes that if they appear destitute of pity, say, for their fowls in their methods of carrying them, it is because they do not reflect that it gives them pain--"all would admit that it was a cruel thing to pain the fowl"; and they have fables in their language which show a desire to enter minutely into the feelings of dumb creatures, representing, for instance, fowls as reasoning on their hard fate in being killed for their master's supper.[31] Among the Indians of the province of Quito, according to Juan and Ulloa, the women are so fond of their fowls that they will not sell them, much less kill them with their own hands; "so that if a stranger, who is obliged to pass the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a fowl, they refuse to part with it, and he finds himself under a necessity of killing the fowl himself. At this his landlady shrieks, dissolves in tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had been an only son; till seeing the mischief past remedy she wipes her eyes, and quietly takes what the traveller offers her."[32] North American Indians, again, are very fond of their hunting dogs. Those on the west side of the Rocky Mountains "appear to have the same affection for them that they have for their children; and they will discourse with them, as if they were rational beings. They frequently call them their sons or daughters; and when describing an Indian, they will speak of him as father of a particular dog which belongs to him. When these dogs die, it is not unusual to see their masters or mistresses place them on a pile of wood, and burn them in the same manner as they do the dead bodies of their relations; and they appear to lament their deaths, by crying and howling, fully as much as if they were their kindred."[33] So also the natives of Australia often display much affection for their dogs; Mr. Gason has seen women crying over a dog when bitten by a snake as if it had been one of their own children, and if a puppy has lost its mother the {496} women suckle and nurse it.[34] Of the Maoris of New Zealand we read that their extreme love of offspring "was also carried out to excess towards the young of brutes--especially of their dogs, and, afterwards, of cats and pigs introduced. Hence it was by no means an unusual sight to see a woman carrying her child at her back, and a pet dog, or pig, in her bosom."[35] The Chukchi of North-Eastern Siberia believe that if a person is cruel to brutes his soul will after his death migrate into some domestic animal--a dog, a horse, or a reindeer.[36] Even the miserable Veddahs of Ceylon are said to be indignant at the needless killing of a beast.[37]

[Footnote 24: Supra, ii. 331.]

[Footnote 25: See supra, i. 112.]

[Footnote 26: Supra, i. 258.]

[Footnote 27: Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 415.]

[Footnote 28: Roscoe, 'Bahima,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvii. 94 sq.]

[Footnote 29: Felkin, 'Notes on the Waganda Tribe,' in _Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 764.]

[Footnote 30: Felkin, 'Notes on the For Tribe,' in _Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 232 sq.]

[Footnote 31: Macdonald, Africana, i. 10 sq.]

[Footnote 32: Juan and Ulloa, Voyage to South America, i. 426 sq.]

[Footnote 33: Harmon, _Journal of Voyages in the Interior of North America_, p. 335 sq.]

[Footnote 34: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 259. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 5. Williams, 'Yircla Meening Tribe,' in Curr, The Australian Race, i. 402.]

[Footnote 35: Colenso, Maori Races of New Zealand, p. 43.]

[Footnote 36: Ratzel, op. cit. ii. 231.]

[Footnote 37: Sarasin, _Ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen auf Ceylon_, iii. 539.]

On the other hand we also hear of savages who are greatly lacking in sympathy for the brute creation. Darwin says that humanity to the lower animals is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets.[38] Mr. Atkinson charges the New Caledonians with great cruelty to animals.[39] The Tasmanians appeared much to enjoy the tortures of a wounded bird or beast.[40] It is not to be expected that people whose kindly feelings towards men hardly extend beyond the borders of their own communities should be compassionate to wild animals. They may also appear wantonly cruel because they do not realise the pain which they inflict. And, like children, they may enjoy the agony of a suffering beast or bird because it excites their curiosity.

[Footnote 38: Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 123.]

[Footnote 39: Atkinson, 'Natives of New Caledonia,' in Folk-lore, xiv. 248.]

[Footnote 40: Davies, quoted by Ling Roth, Tasmanians, p. 66.]

It is obvious from what has been said above that already at the savage stage men's conduct towards the lower animals must in some cases be a matter of moral concern. For hand in hand with the altruistic sentiment we always find the feeling of sympathetic resentment whenever there is an occasion for its outburst. Moreover, {497} acts which are, or are believed to be, injurious to the agent, by exposing him to an animal's revenge or otherwise, are prohibited because they are imprudent; and, as we have often noticed, such prohibitions are apt to assume a moral character. Finally, if a certain mode of conduct is considered to be productive of public harm, as is the case with any act or omission which reduces, or is supposed to reduce, the supply of food or animal clothing, it is naturally looked upon as a wrong against the community.

Similar facts have, among peoples of a higher culture, led to moral rules inculcating regard for animals--rules which have often assumed a definite shape in their laws or religious books.

According to Brahmanism tenderness towards all creatures is a duty incumbent upon the four castes. It is said that "he who injures innoxious beings from a wish to give himself pleasure, never finds happiness, neither living nor dead."[41] If a blow is struck against animals in order to give them pain, the judge shall inflict a fine in proportion to the amount of pain caused, just as if the blow had been struck against a man.[42] The killing of various creatures, including fish and snakes, reduces the offender to a mixed caste;[43] and, according to 'Vishnu Purana,' fishermen go after death to the same hell as awaits prisoners, incendiaries, and treacherous friends.[44] To kill a cow is a great crime;[45] whereas he who unhesitatingly abandons life for the sake of a cow is freed even from the guilt of the murder of a Brâhmana, and so is he who saves the life of a cow.[46] Among many of the Hindus the slaughter of a cow excites more horror than the killing of a man, and is punished with great severity, even with death.[47]

[Footnote 41: Laws of Manu, v. 45.]

[Footnote 42: Ibid. viii. 286.]

[Footnote 43: Ibid. xi. 69.]

[Footnote 44: Vish['n]u Purá['n]a, p. 208 sq.]

[Footnote 45: Institutes of Vishnu, l. 16 sqq. Gautama, xxii. 18. Âpastamba, i. 26. 1. Laws of Manu, xi. 109 sqq.]

[Footnote 46: Laws of Manu, xi. 80.]

[Footnote 47: Barth, Religions of India, p. 264. Kipling, Beast and Man in India, p. 118 sq. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 91.]

In Buddhism, Jainism, and Taouism the respect for animal life is extreme. A disciple of Buddha may not {498} knowingly deprive any creature of life, not even a worm or an ant. He may not drink water in which animal life of any kind whatever is contained, and must not even pour it out on grass or clay.[48] And the doctrine which forbids the killing of animate beings is not only professed, but in a large measure followed, by the great majority of people in Buddhistic countries. In Siam the tameness of many living creatures which in Europe fly from the presence of man is very striking. Instances have been known in which natives have quitted the service of Europeans on account of their unwillingness to destroy reptiles and vermin, and it is a not uncommon practice for rich Siamese to buy live fish to have the merit of restoring them to the sea.[49] In Burma, though fish is one of the staple foods of the people, the fisherman is despised; not so much, perhaps, as if he killed other living things, but he is still an outcast from decent society, and "will have to suffer great and terrible punishment before he can be cleansed from the sins that he daily commits."[50] The Buddhists of Ceylon are more forbearing: they excuse the fisherman by saying that he does not kill the fish, but only removes it from the water.[51] In Tibet all dumb creatures are treated with humanity, and the taking of animal life is rather strictly prohibited, except in the case of yaks and sheep needed for food. Owing to the coldness of the climate, flesh forms an essential staple of diet; but the butchers are regarded as professional sinners and are therefore the most despised of all classes in Tibet. Wild animals and even small birds and fish are seldom or never killed, on account of the religious penalties attached to this crime.[52]

[Footnote 48: Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 290 **n. *, 351.]

[Footnote 49: Bowring, Siam, i. 107.]

[Footnote 50: Fielding Hall, The Soul of a People, p. 230.]

[Footnote 51: Schmidt, Ceylon, p. 316 sq.]

[Footnote 52: Waddell, Buddhism of Tibet, p. 567 sq.]

The Jain is stricter still in his regard for animal life. He sweeps the ground before him as he goes, lest animate things be destroyed; he walks veiled, lest he inhale a living organism; he considers that the evening and night are {499} not times for eating, since one might then swallow a live thing by mistake; and he rejects not only meat but even honey, together with various fruits that are supposed to contain worms, not because of his distaste for worms but because of his regard for life.[53] Some towns in Western India in which Jains are found have their beast hospitals, where animals are kept and fed. At Surat there was quite recently an establishment of this sort with a house where a host of noxious and offensive vermin, dense as the sands on the sea-shore, were bred and nurtured; and at Anjár, in Kutch, about five thousand rats were kept in a certain temple and daily fed with flour, which was procured by a tax on the inhabitants of the town.[54]

[Footnote 53: Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 288. Barth, op. cit. p. 145. Kipling, op. cit. p. 10 sq.]

[Footnote 54: Burnes, 'Notice of a remarkable Hospital for Animals at Surat,' in Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc. i. 96 sq.]

According to 'Thâi-Shang,' one of the books of Taouism, a good man will feel kindly towards all creatures, and refrain from hurting even the insect tribes, grass, and trees; and he is a bad man who "shoots birds and hunts beasts, unearths the burrowing insects and frightens roosting birds, blocks up the dens of animals and overturns nests, hurts the pregnant womb and breaks eggs."[55] In the book called 'Merits and Errors Scrutinised,' which enjoys great popularity in China, it is said to be meritorious to save animals from death--even insects if the number amounts to a hundred,--to relieve a brute that is greatly wearied with work, to purchase and set at liberty animals intended to be slaughtered. On the other hand, to confine birds in a cage, to kill ten insects, to be unsparing of the strength of tired animals, to disturb insects in their holes, to destroy the nests of birds, without great reason to kill and dress animals for food, are all errors of various degrees. And "to be the foremost to encourage the slaughter of animals, or to hinder persons from setting them at liberty," is regarded as an error of the same magnitude as the crime of devising a person's death or of drowning or murdering a child.[56] Kindness {500} to animals is conspicuous in the writings of Confucius and Mencius;[57] the Master angled but did not use a net, he shot but not at birds perching.[58] Throughout Japan, according to Sir Edward Reed, "the life of animals has always been held more or less sacred. . . ., neither Shintoism nor Buddhism requiring or justifying the taking of the life of any creature for sacrifice."[59]

[Footnote 55: Thâi-Shang, 3 sq.]

[Footnote 56: Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 164, 205 sq.]

[Footnote 57: Mencius, i. 1. 7.]

[Footnote 58: Lun Yü, vii. 26.]

[Footnote 59: Reed, Japan, i. 61.]

The regard for the lower animals which is shown by these Eastern religions and their adherents is to some extent due to superstitious ideas, similar to those which we found prevalent among many savages. Dr. de Groot observes that in China the virtues of benevolence and humanity are extended to animals because these, also, have souls which may work vengeance or bring reward.[60] The conduct of Orientals towards the brute creation has further been explained by their belief in the transmigration of souls. But it seems that the connection between their theory of metempsychosis and their rules relating to the treatment of animals is not exclusively, nor even chiefly, one of cause and effect, but rather one of a common origin. This theory itself may in some measure be regarded as a result of that intimacy which prevails in the East between animals and men. Buddhism recognises no fundamental distinction between them, only an accidental or phenomenal difference;[61] and the step is not long from this attitude to the doctrine of metempsychosis. Captain Forbes maintains that the humanity with which the Burmans treat dumb animals comes "more from the innate good nature and easiness of their dispositions than from any effect over them of this peculiar doctrine";[62] and they laugh at the suggestion made by Europeans that Buddhists abstain from taking life because they believe in the transmigration of souls, having never heard of it before. Their motive, says Mr. Fielding Hall, is compassion and noblesse oblige.[63] But by its punishments {501} and rewards, religion has greatly increased the natural regard for animal life and welfare, and introduced a new motive for conduct which originally sprang in the main from kindly feeling.

[Footnote 60: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. iv. book) ii. 450.]

[Footnote 61: Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism, p. 214.]

[Footnote 62: Forbes, British Burma, p. 321.]

[Footnote 63: Fielding Hall, op. cit. p. 237 sq.]

In Zoroastrianism we meet with a different attitude towards the lower animal world. A fundamental distinction is made between the animals of Ormuzd and those of Ahriman. To kill one of the former is a heinous sin, to kill one of the latter is a pious deed.[64] Sacred above all other animals is the dog. The ill-feeding and maltreatment of dogs are prosecuted as criminal, and extreme penalties are inflicted on those who venture to kill them.[65] Nay, if there be in the house of a worshipper of Mazda a mad dog who has no scent, the worshippers of Mazda "shall attend him to heal him, in the same manner as they would do for one of the faithful."[66] In the eyes of the Parsis, animals are enlisted under the standards of either Ormuzd or Ahriman according as they are useful or hurtful to man; but M. Darmesteter is of opinion that they originally belonged to the one or the other not on account of any such qualities, but according as they chanced to have lent their forms to either the god or the fiend in the storm tales. "It was not animal psychology," he says, "that disguised gods and fiends as dogs, otters, hedge-hogs, and cocks, or as snakes, tortoises, frogs, and ants, but the accidents of physical qualities and the caprice of popular fancy, as both the god and the fiend might be compared with, and transformed into, any object, the idea of which was suggested by the uproar of the storm, the blazing of the lightning, the streaming of the water, or the hue and shape of the clouds."[67] This hypothesis, however, seems to attach undue importance to mythical fancies, and it presupposes an almost unbounded and capricious allegorism, for which there is apparently little foundation {502} in facts. The suggestion that the animals are referred to either the one or the other category according as they are useful or obnoxious to man, is at all events borne out by a few salient features, although in many details the matter remains obscure.

[Footnote 64: Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 283.]

[Footnote 65: Vendîdâd, xiii. sq. Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Iranians, ii. 36.]

[Footnote 66: Vendîdâd, xiii. 35.]

[Footnote 67: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. (1st edit.) p. lxxii. sq. See also Idem, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 283 sqq.]

It appears that among the Zoroastrians, also, the respect for the life of animals is partly due to superstitious ideas about their souls and fear of their revenge. According to the 'Yasts,' "the souls of the wild beasts and of the tame" are objects of worship;[68] and in one of the Pahlavi texts it is said that people should abstain from unlawfully slaughtering any species of animals, since otherwise, in punishment for such an act, each hair of the animal killed becomes like a sharp dagger, and he who is unlawfully a slaughterer is slain.[69] But here again we may assume the co-operating influence of the feeling of sympathy. Various passages in the Zoroastrian 'Gathas' which enjoin kindness to domestic animals[70] suggest as their motives not only considerations of utility but genuine tenderness. In a later age Firdausi sang, "Ah! spare yon emmet rich in hoarded grain: He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain."[71] And of the modern Persian Dr. Polak says that, "naturally not cruel, he treats animals with more consideration than men."[72] His present religion, too, enjoins kindness to animals as a duty.

[Footnote 68: Yasts, xiii. 154.]

[Footnote 69: Shâyast Lâ-Shâyast, x. 8.]

[Footnote 70: Darmesteter, in Le Zend-Avesta, i. p. cvi.]

[Footnote 71: Firdausi, quoted by Jones, 'Tenth Anniversary Discourse,' in Asiatick Researches, iv. 12.]

[Footnote 72: Polak, Persien, i. 12.]

According to Muhammedanism, beasts, birds, fish, insects, are all, like man, the slaves of God, the tools of His will. There is no intrinsic distinction between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity God may have been pleased to make.[73] Muhammed said to his followers:--"There is not a beast upon the earth nor a bird that flies with both its wings, but is a nation like to you; . . . to their Lord shall they be gathered."[74] Muhammedan law prescribes that domestic animals shall {503} be treated with consideration and not be overworked;[75] and in various Muhammedan countries this law has also been habitually put into practice. The Moslems of India are kind to animals.[76] In his earlier intercourse with the people of Egypt, Mr. Lane noticed much humanity to beasts.[77] Montaigne said that the Turks gave alms to brutes and had hospitals for them;[78] and Mr. Bosworth Smith is of opinion that beasts of burden and domestic animals are nowhere in Christendom with the one exception, perhaps, of Norway treated with such unvarying kindness and consideration as they are in Turkey. "In the East," he adds, "so far as it has not been hardened by the West, there is a real sympathy between man and the domestic animals; they understand one another."[79]

[Footnote 73: Cf. Palgrave, _Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia_, i. 368.]

[Footnote 74: Koran, vi. 38.]

[Footnote 75: Sachau, Muhammedanisches Recht, pp. 18, 103.]

[Footnote 76: Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, pp. 176, 177, 247. Cf. Heber, Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, ii. 131.]

[Footnote 77: Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 293.]

[Footnote 78: Montaigne, Essais, ii. 11.]

[Footnote 79: Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, pp. 180, 217.]

So also the ancient Greeks were on familiar terms with the animal world. This appears from the frequency with which their poets illustrate human qualities by metaphors drawn from it. And as men were compared with animals, so animals were believed to possess human peculiarities. When a beast was going to be sacrificed it had to give its consent to the act by a nod of the head before it was killed.[80] Animals were held in some measure responsible for their deeds; they were tried for manslaughter, sentenced, and executed.[81] On the other hand, honours were bestowed upon beasts which had rendered signal services to their masters. The graves of Cimon's mares with which he three times conquered at the Olympic games were still in the days of Plutarch to be seen near his own tomb;[82] and a certain Xanthippus honoured his dog by burying it on a promontory, since then called "the dog's grave," because when the Athenians were compelled to abandon their city it swam by the side of his galley to Salamis.[83] According to Xenocrates, there were in existence {504} at Eleusis three laws which had been made by an ancient legislator, namely:--"Honour your parents; Sacrifice to the gods from the fruits of the earth; Injure not animals."[84] At Athens a man was punished for flaying a living ram.[85] The Areopagites once condemned a boy to death because he had picked out the eyes of some quails.[86] As we have noticed before, the life of the ploughing ox was sacred;[87] and young animals in particular were believed to be under the protection of the gods.[88] An ancient proverb says that "there are Erinyes even for dogs."[89] This seems to indicate that the Greeks, also, were influenced by the common notion that the soul of an animal may take revenge upon him who killed it, the Erinys of the slain animal being originally its persecuting ghost. Among the Pythagoreans, again, the rule that animals which are not obnoxious to the human race should be neither injured nor killed[90] was connected with their theory of metempsychosis;[91] and in some cases the prohibition of slaying useful animals may be traced to utilitarian motives.[92] But both in Greece and Rome kindness to brutes was also inculcated for their own sake, on purely humanitarian grounds. Porphyry says that, as justice pertains to rational beings and animals have been proved to be possessed of reason, it is necessary that we should act justly towards them.[93] He adds that "he who does not restrict harmless conduct to man alone, but extends it to other animals, most closely approaches to divinity; and if it were possible to extend it to plants, he would preserve this image in a still greater degree."[94] According to Plutarch kindness and beneficence to creatures of every species flow from the breast of a well-natured man as {505} streams that issue from the living fountain. We ought to take care of our dogs and horses not only when they are young, but when they are old and past service.[95] We ought not to violate or kill anything whatsoever that has life, unless it hurt us first.[96] And if we cannot live unblamably we should at least sin with discretion: when we kill an animal in order to satisfy our hunger we should do so with sorrow and pity, without abusing and tormenting it.[97] Cicero says it is a crime to injure an animal.[98] And Marcus Aurelius enjoins man to make use of brutes with a generous and liberal spirit, since he has reason and they have not.[99]

[Footnote 80: Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 96 sq.]

[Footnote 81: Supra, i. 254.]

[Footnote 82: Plutarch, Cato Major, v. 6.]

[Footnote 83: Ibid. v. 7.]

[Footnote 84: Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, iv. 22.]

[Footnote 85: Plutarch, De carnium esu oratio I. vii. 2.]

[Footnote 86: Quintilian, De institutione oratoria, v. 9. 13.]

[Footnote 87: Supra, ii. 331.]

[Footnote 88: Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 48 sqq. Xenophon, Cynegeticus, v. 14.]

[Footnote 89: Schmidt, op. cit. ii. 96.]

[Footnote 90: Jamblichus, De Pythagorica vita, 21 (98).]

[Footnote 91: Diogenes Laertius, Vitæ philosophorum, viii. 2. 12 (77). Aristotle, Rhetorica, i. 13. 2, p. 1373 b. Schmidt, op. cit. ii. 94.]

[Footnote 92: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 22. Supra, ii. 331.]

[Footnote 93: Porphyry, op. cit. iii. 18.]

[Footnote 94: Ibid. iii. 28.]

[Footnote 95: Plutarch, Cato Major, v. 3 sq.]

[Footnote 96: Idem, Questiones Romanæ, 75.]

[Footnote 97: Idem, De carnium esu oratio II. i. 3.]

[Footnote 98: Cicero, De republica, iii. 11.]

[Footnote 99: Marcus Aurelius, Commentarii, vi. 23.]

In the Old Testament we meet with several instances of kindly feeling towards animals.[100] God watches over and controls the sustenance of their life. He sends springs into the valleys which will give drink to every beast of the field. He gives nests to the birds of the heaven, which sing among the branches. He causes grass to grow for the cattle; and the young lions, roaring after their prey, seek their food from God.[101] Whilst the Jews, as Professor Toy observes, found it hard to conceive of the God of Israel as thinking kindly of its enemies, they had no such feeling of hostility towards beasts and birds.[102] But at the same time man is the centre of the creation, a being set apart from all other sentient creatures as God's special favourite, for whose sake everything else was brought into existence. The sun, the moon, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the estate of man.[103] For his sustenance the fruits of the earth were made to grow, and to him was given dominion over the fish of the sea, {506} and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.[104] And when the earth is to be replenished after the deluge, the same privileges are again granted to him. The fear of man and the dread of man shall be upon all living creatures, into his hand are they all delivered, they shall all be meat for him.[105] And they are given over to his supreme and irresponsible control without the slightest injunction of kindness or the faintest suggestion of any duties towards them. They are to be regarded by him simply as food.[106]

[Footnote 100: See Bertholet, Die Stellung der Israeliten zu den Fremden, p. 14. Various passages, however, which are often quoted as instances of tenderness towards animals allow of another and more natural interpretation. This is especially the case with the Sabbatarian injunctions referring to domestic animals.]

[Footnote 101: Psalms, civ. 10-12, 14, 17, 21.]

[Footnote 102: Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 81.]

[Footnote 103: Genesis, i. 16 sq.]

[Footnote 104: Genesis, i. 28.]

[Footnote 105: Ibid. ix. 2 sq.]

[Footnote 106: Cf. Evans, 'Ethical Relations between Man and Beast,' in Popular Science Monthly, xlv. 637 sq.]

Among the Hebrews the harshness of this anthropocentric doctrine was somewhat mitigated by the sympathy which a simple pastoral and agricultural people naturally feels for its domestic animals. In Christianity, on the other hand, it was further strengthened by the exclusive importance which was attached to the spiritual salvation of man. He was now more than ever separated from the rest of sentient beings. Even his own animal nature was regarded with contempt, the immortality of his soul being the only object of religious interest. "It would seem," says Dr. Arnold, "as if the primitive Christian, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradistinction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures."[107] St. Paul asks with scorn, "Doth God take care for oxen?"[108] No creed in Christendom teaches kindness to animals as a dogma of religion.[109] In the Middle Ages various councils of the Church declared hunting unlawful for the clergy;[110] but the obvious reason for this prohibition was its horror of bloodshed,[111] not any consideration {507} for the animals. Mr. Mauleverer in Sir Arthur Helps' 'Talk about Animals and their Masters,' says, "Upon a moderate calculation, I think I have heard, in my time, 1320 sermons; and I do not recollect that in any one of them I ever heard the slightest allusion made to the conduct of men towards animals."[112] Nor is there any such allusion in most treatises on Ethics which base their teachings upon distinctly Christian tenets. The kindest words, I think, which from a Christian point of view have been said about animals have generally come from Protestant sectarians, Quakers and Methodists,[113] whereas Roman Catholic writers--with a few exceptions[114]--when they deal with the subject at all, chiefly take pains to show that animals are entirely destitute of rights. Brute beasts, says Father Rickaby, cannot have any rights for the reason that they have no understanding and therefore are not persons. We have no duties of any kind to them, as neither to stocks and stones; we only have duties about them. We must not harm them when they are our neighbour's property, we must not vex and annoy them for sport, because it disposes him who does so to inhumanity towards his own species. But there is no shadow of evil resting on the practice of causing pain to brutes in sport, where the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces to the sustenance of man may we give pain to animals, and we are not "bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may be. Brutes are as things in our regard: so far as they are useful to us, they exist for us, not for themselves; and we do right in using them unsparingly for our need and convenience, though not for our wantonness."[115] According to another {508} modern Catholic writer the infliction of suffering upon an animal is not only justifiable, but a duty, "when it confers a certain, a solid good, however small, on the spiritual nature of man."[116] Pope Pius IX. refused a request for permission to form in Rome a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the professed ground that it was a theological error to suppose that man owes any duty to an animal.[117]

[Footnote 107: Arnold, quoted by Evans, in _Popular Science Monthly_, xlv. 639.]

[Footnote 108: 1 Corinthians, ix. 9.]

[Footnote 109: The Manichæans prohibited all killing of animals (Baur, Das Manichäische Religionssystem, p. 252 sqq.); but Manichæism did not originate on Christian ground (Harnack, 'Manichæism,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, xv. 485; supra, ii. 312).]

[Footnote 110: Le Grand d'Aussy, Histoire de la vie privée des François, i. 394 sq.]

[Footnote 111: Supra, i. 381 sq.]

[Footnote 112: Helps, _Some Talk about Animals and their Masters_, p. 20. Cf. Mrs. Jameson, _Common-Place Book of Thoughts_, p. 212.]

[Footnote 113: See Gurney, _Views and Practices of the Society of Friends_, p. 392 sq. n. 8; Richmond, 'Sermon on the Sin of Cruelty to the Brute Creation,' in Methodist Magazine (London), xxx. 490 sqq.; Chalmers, 'Cruelty to Animals,' in _Methodist Magazine_ (New York), ix. 259 sqq.]

[Footnote 114: See de la Roche-Fontenelles, L'Église et la pitié envers animaux, passim.]

[Footnote 115: Rickaby, Moral Philosophy, p. 248 sqq. See also Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, p. 33; Clarke, 'Cruelty to Animals,' in The Month and Catholic Review, xxv. 401 sqq.; Hedley, 'Dr. Mivart on Faith and Science,' in _Dublin Review_, ser. iii. vol. xviii. 418.]

[Footnote 116: Clarke, in The Month and Catholic Review, xxv. 406.]

[Footnote 117: Cobbe, Modern Rack, p. 6.]

It is not only theological moralists that maintain that animals can have no rights and that abstinence from wanton cruelty is a duty not to the animal but to man. This view has been shared by Kant[118] and by many later philosophers.[119] So also the legal protection of animals has often been vindicated merely on the ground that cruelty to animals might breed cruelty to men or shows a cruel disposition of mind,[120] or that it wounds the sensibilities of other people.[121] In 'Parliamentary History and Review' for 1825-1826 it is stated that no reason can be assigned for the interference of the legislator in the protection of animals unless their protection be connected, either directly or remotely, with some advantage to man.[122] The Bill for the abolition of bear-baiting and other cruel practices was expressly propounded on the ground that nothing was more conducive to crime than such sports, that they led the lower orders to gambling, that they educated them for thieves, that they gradually trained them up to bloodshed and murder.[123] The criminal code of the German Empire, again, imposes a fine upon any person "who spitefully tortures or cruelly ill-treats beasts, {509} either publicly or in a manner to create scandal"[124]--in other words, he is punished, not because he puts the animal to pain, but because his conduct is offensive to his fellow men.

[Footnote 118: Kant, _Metaphysische Anfangungsgründe der Tugendlehre_, § 16 sq., pp. 106, 108.]

[Footnote 119: E.g., Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, p. 281; Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 110 sq.]

[Footnote 120: Hommel, quoted by von Hippel, Die Thielquälerei in der Strafgesetzgebung, p. 110. Tissot, Le droit pénal, i. 17. Lasson, System der Rechtsphilosophie, p. 548 sq.]

[Footnote 121: Lasson, op. cit. p. 548. von Hippel, op. cit. p. 125.]

[Footnote 122: Parliamentary History and Review, 1825-6, p. 761.]

[Footnote 123: Ibid. p. 546.]

[Footnote 124: Strafgesetzbuch, § 360 (13).]

Indifference to animal suffering has been a characteristic of public opinion in European countries up to quite modern times. Only a little more than a hundred years ago Thomas Young declared in his 'Essay on Humanity to Animals' that he was sensible of laying himself open to no small portion of ridicule in offering to the public a book on such a subject.[125] Till the end of the eighteenth century and even later cock-fighting was a very general amusement among the English and Scotch, entering into the occupations of both the old and young. Travellers agreed with coachmen that they were to wait a night if there was a cock-fight in any town through which they passed. Schools had their cock-fights; on Shrove Tuesday every youth took to the village schoolroom a cock reared for his special use, and the schoolmaster presided at the conflict.[126] Those who felt that the practice required some excuse found it in the idea that the race was to suffer this annual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter's crime;[127] but the number of people who had any scruples about the game cannot have been great considering that even such a strong advocate of humanity to animals as Lawrence had no decided antipathy to it.[128] Other pastimes indulged in were dog-fighting, bull-baiting and badger-baiting; and in the middle of the eighteenth century the bear-garden was described by Lord Kames as one of the chief entertainments of the English, though it was held in abhorrence by the French and "other polite nations," being too savage an amusement to be relished {510} by those of a refined taste.[129] As late as 1824 Sir Robert (then Mr.) Peel argued strongly against the legal prohibition of bull-baiting.[130]

[Footnote 125: Young, Essay on Humanity to Animals, p. 1.]

[Footnote 126: Roberts, Social History of the People of the Southern Counties of England, p. 421 sqq. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, ii. 340. In 1856, when Roberts wrote his book, cock-penance was still paid in some English grammar schools to the master as a perquisite on Shrove Tuesday (Roberts, p. 423).]

[Footnote 127: Roberts, op. cit. p. 422.]

[Footnote 128: Lawrence, Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses, ii. 12.]

[Footnote 129: Kames, Essays on the Principles of Morality, p. 7.]

[Footnote 130: Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, New Series, x. 491 sqq.]

About two years previously, however, humanity to animals had, for the first time, become a subject of English legislation by the Act which prevented cruel and improper treatment of cattle.[131] This Act was afterwards followed by others which prohibited bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and similar pastimes, as also cruelty to domestic animals in general. In 1876 vivisection for medical or scientific purposes was subjected to a variety of restrictions, and since 1900 cases of ill-treatment of wild animals in captivity may be dealt with under the Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act.[132] On the Continent cruelty to animals was first prohibited by criminal law in Saxony, in 1838,[133] and subsequently in most other European states. But in the South of Europe there are still countries in which the law is entirely silent on the subject.[134]

[Footnote 131: Statutes of Great Britain and Ireland, lxii. 403 sqq.]

[Footnote 132: Stephen, New Commentaries on the Laws of England, iv. 213 sqq.]

[Footnote 133: von Hippel, op. cit. p. 1.]

[Footnote 134: Ibid. p. 90 sq.]

Whatever be the professed motives of legislators for preventing cruelty to animals, there can be no doubt that the laws against it are chiefly due to a keener and more generally felt sympathy with their sufferings. The actual feelings of men have commonly been somewhat more tender than the theories of law, philosophy, and religion. The anthropocentric exclusiveness of Christianity was from ancient times to some extent counterbalanced by popular sentiments and beliefs. In the folk-tales of Europe man is not placed in an isolated and unique position in the universe. He lives in intimate and friendly intercourse with the animals round him, attributes to them human qualities, and regards them with mercy.[135] Tender feelings towards the brute creation are also displayed in many legends of saints.[136] St. Francis of Assisi {511} talked with the birds and called them "brother birds" or "little sister swallows," and was seen employed in removing worms from the road that they might not be trampled by travellers.[137] John Moschus speaks of a certain abbot who early in the morning not only used to give food to all the dogs in the monastery, but would bring corn to the ants and to the birds on the roof.[138] In the 'Revelations of St. Bridget' we read, "Let a man fear, above all, me, his God, and so much the gentler will he become towards my creatures and animals, on whom, on account of me, their Creator, he ought to have compassion."[139] Many kind words about animals have come from poets and thinkers. Montaigne says that he has never been able to see without affliction an innocent beast, which is without defence and from which we receive no offence, pursued and killed.[140] Shakespeare points out that "the poor beetle that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great as when a giant dies."[141] Mandeville thinks that if it was not for that tyranny which custom usurps over us, no men of any tolerable good-nature could ever be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food, as long as the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them with varieties of vegetable dainties.[142] Towards the end of the eighteenth century Bentham wrote:--"Men must be permitted to kill animals; but they should be forbidden to torment them. Artificial death may be rendered less painful than natural death by simple processes, well worth the trouble of being studied, and of becoming an object of police. Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? A time will come when humanity will spread its mantle over everything that breathes. The lot of slaves has begun to {512} excite pity; we shall end by softening the lot of the animals which labour for us and supply our wants."[143] Some years later Thomas Young pronounced hunting, shooting, and fishing for sport to be "unlawful, cruel, and sinful."[144] And in the course of the nineteenth century humanity to animals, from being conspicuous in a few individuals only, became the keynote of a movement gradually increasing in strength. Humanitarians, says Mr. Salt, "insist that the difference between human and non-human is one of degree only and not of kind, and that we owe duties, the same in kind though not in degree, to all our sentient fellow-beings."[145] Some people maintain that it is wrong to kill animals for food or in sport; but the most vigorous attacks concerning the treatment of the brute creation are at present directed against the practice of vivisection. The claim is made that this practice should be, not merely restricted, but entirely prohibited by law. And while the antivivisectionists generally endeavour to deny or minimise the scientific importance of experiments on living animals, their cry for the abolition of such experiments is mainly based on the argument that humanity at large has no right to purchase relief from its own suffering by torturing helpless brutes.

[Footnote 135: Supra, i. 259. Schwarz, Prähistorisch-anthropologische Studien, p. 203.]

[Footnote 136: Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 168 sqq. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, ii. 517 sq.]

[Footnote 137: Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, p. 176 sq. Digby, Mores Catholici, ii. 291.]

[Footnote 138: Moschus, Pratum spirituale, 184 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, Ser. Græca, lxxxvii. 3056).]

[Footnote 139: St. Bridget, quoted by Helps, op. cit. p. 124.]

[Footnote 140: Montaigne, Essais, ii. 11.]

[Footnote 141: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, iii. 1.]

[Footnote 142: Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, p. 187.]

[Footnote 143: Bentham, Theory of Legislation, p. 428 sq.]

[Footnote 144: Young, op. cit. p. 75 sq.]

[Footnote 145: Salt, Animals' Rights, p. v.]

This rapidly increasing sympathy with animal suffering is no doubt to a considerable extent due to the decline of the anthropocentric doctrine and the influence of another theory, which regards man, not as an image of the deity separated from the lower animals by a special act of creation, but as a being generally akin to them, and only representing a higher stage in the scale of mental evolution. Through this doctrine the orthodox contempt for dumb creatures was succeeded by feelings of affinity and kindly interest. But apart from any theory as regards human origins, growing reflection has also taught men to be more considerate in their treatment of animals by producing a more vivid idea of their sufferings. Human thoughtlessness {513} has been responsible for much needless pain to which they have been made subject. In spite of some improvement it is so still; whilst, at the same time, the movement advocating greater humanity to animals is itself not altogether free from inconsistencies and a certain lack of discrimination.

It has been observed that the Neapolitan would not act so cruelly as he does to almost all animals except the cat if he could bring himself to conceive their capacity for joy and pain.[146] So also we ourselves should often behave differently if we realised the tortures we thoughtlessly cause to creatures whose sufferings escape our notice from want of obvious outward expression. While the practice of whipping young pigs to death to make them tender, which occurred in England not much more than a century ago,[147] would nowadays be regarded with general horror, cruelties inflicted for gastronomic purposes upon creatures of a lower type are little thought of. Cray-fish, oysters, and fish in general, as Mandeville observed, excite hardly any compassion at all, because "they express themselves unintelligibly to us; they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure, vastly different from ours."[148] On the other hand, even passionate sportsmen describe the hunting of monkeys as repulsive on account of their resemblance to man; Rajah Brooke thought it almost barbarous to kill an orang-utan, unless for the sake of scientific research.[149] Buddhism itself declares that "he who takes away the life of a large animal will have greater demerit than he who takes away the life of a small one. . . . The crime is not great when an ant is killed; its magnitude increases in this progression--a lizard, a guana, a hare, a deer, a bull, a horse, and an elephant."[150] How little the feelings which underlie men's opinions concerning conduct {514} towards the lower animals are influenced by reflection is also apparent in the present crusade against vivisection, when compared with the public indifference to the sufferings inflicted on wild animals in sport. The vivisector who in cold blood torments his helpless victim in the interest of science and for the benefit of mankind is called a coward, and is a much more common object of hatred than the sportsman who causes agonies to the creature he pursues for sheer amusement. The pursued animal, it is argued, has "free chances of escape."[151] This is an excellent argument--provided we share the North American Indian's conviction that an animal can never be killed without its own permission.

[Footnote 146: 'Cruelty to Animals in Naples,' in _Saturday Review_, lix. 854.]

[Footnote 147: The World, 1756, nr. 190, p. 1142. Young, op. cit. p. 129.]

[Footnote 148: Mandeville, op. cit. p. 187.]

[Footnote 149: Brooke, Ten Years in Saráwak, i. 100. Cf. Rengger, Naturgeschichte in der Säugethiere von Paraguay, p. 26.]

[Footnote 150: Hardy, Manual of Budhism, pp. 478, 480.]

[Footnote 151: Cobbe, op. cit. p. 10.]

At present there is among ourselves no topic of moral concern which presents a greater variety of opinion than the question how far the happiness of the lower animals may be justly sacrificed for the benefit of man. The extreme views on this subject might, no doubt, be somewhat modified, on the one hand by a more vivid representation of animal suffering, on the other hand by the recognition of certain facts, often overlooked, which make it unreasonable to regard conduct towards dumb creatures in exactly the same light as conduct towards men. It should especially be remembered that the former have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery or death which we have.[152] If they are destined to serve as meat they are not aware of it; whereas many domestic animals would never have come into existence, and been able to enjoy what appears a very happy life, but for the purpose of being used as food. But though greater intellectual discrimination may somewhat lessen the divergencies of moral opinion on the subject, nothing like unanimity can be expected, for the simple reason that moral judgments are ultimately based upon emotions, and sympathy with the animal world is a feeling which varies extremely in different individuals.

[Footnote 152: Cf. Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 311, n.]

XLV. REGARD FOR THE DEAD

MORALITY takes notice not only of men's conduct towards the living but of their conduct towards the dead.

There is a general tendency in the human mind to assume that what has existed still exists and will exist. When a person dies it is difficult for those around him to conceive that he is really dead, and when the cold motionless body bears sad testimony to the change which has taken place, there is a natural inclination to believe that the soul has only changed its abode. In the savage the tendency to assume the continued existence of the soul after death is strongly supported by dreams and visions of his deceased friends. What else could these mean but visits of their souls?

There are, it is true, some savages who are reported to believe in the annihilation of the soul at the moment of death, or to have no notion whatever of a future state.[1] But the accuracy of these statements is hardly beyond suspicion. We sometimes hear that the very people who are said to deny any belief in an after-life are afraid of ghosts.[2] A native of Madagascar will almost in the same {516} breath declare that when he dies he ceases altogether to exist and yet confess the fact that he is in the habit of praying to his dead ancestors.[3] Of the Masai in Eastern Africa some writers state that they believe in annihilation,[4] others that they attribute a future existence to their chiefs, medicine men, or influential people.[5] The ideas on this subject are often exceedingly vague, and inconsistencies are only to be expected.

[Footnote 1: Powers, Tribes of California, p. 348 sq. (Miwok). Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 233 sq. (some Oregon Indians). Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 101 (natives of the Herbert River, Northern Queensland). Martin, _Reisen in den Molukken_, p. 155 (Alfura). Worcester, Philippine Islands, p. 412 (Mangyans). Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 76 (Lethtas). Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 257 (Oráons). Petherick, Travels in Central Africa, i. 321 (Nouaer tribes). Du Chaillu, Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 385.]

[Footnote 2: New, Life in Eastern Africa, p. 105.]

[Footnote 3: Ellis, History of Madagascar, 393.]

[Footnote 4: Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 259. Hinde, _The Last of the Masai_, p. 99.]

[Footnote 5: Johnston, Uganda, ii. 832. Hollis, Masai, pp. 304, 305, 307. Eliot, ibid. p. xx.]

The disembodied soul is commonly supposed to have the shape of a small unsubstantial human image, and to be in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow.[6] It is believed to have the same bodily wants and to possess the same mental capacities as its owner possessed during his lifetime. It is not regarded as invulnerable or immortal--it may be hurt and killed. It feels hunger and thirst, heat and cold. It can see and hear and think, it has human passions and a human will, and it has the power to influence the living for evil or for good. These notions as regards the disembodied soul determine the relations between the living and the dead.

[Footnote 6: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 429.]

The dead are supposed to have rights very similar to those they had whilst alive. The soul must not be killed or injured. The South Australian Dieyerie, for instance, show great reverence for certain trees, which are believed to be their fathers transformed; they will not cut them down and protest against the settlers doing so.[7] So also some of the Philippine Islanders maintain that the souls of their forefathers are in trees, which they therefore spare.[8] The North American Powhatans refrained from doing harm to some small wood-birds, which were supposed to receive the souls of their chiefs.[9] In Lifu, {517} when a father was about to die, surrounded by members of his family, he might say what animal he would be, for instance a butterfly or some kind of bird, and that creature would be sacred to his family, who would neither injure nor kill it.[10] The Rejangs of Sumatra imagine that tigers in general contain the spirits of departed men, and "no consideration will prevail on a countryman to catch or to wound one, but in self-defence, or immediately after the act of destroying a friend or relation."[11] Among other peoples monkeys, crocodiles, or snakes, being thought men in metempsychosis, are held sacred and must not be hurt.[12] Some Congo Negroes, again, abstain for a whole year after a death from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost.[13] In China, for seven days after a man's death his widow and children avoid the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers, so as not to wound the ghost.[14] And to this day it remains a German peasants' belief that it is wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it.[15]

[Footnote 7: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods' Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 280.]

[Footnote 8: Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,' in Mittheil. d. kais. u. kön. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxv. 164 sqq.]

[Footnote 9: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 102.]

[Footnote 10: Codrington, quoted by Tylor, 'Remarks on Totemism,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxviii. 147.]

[Footnote 11: Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 292. The same belief prevails among the natives of the Malay Peninsula (Newbold, British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, ii. 192).]

[Footnote 12: Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 212. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 8.]

[Footnote 13: Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 323.]

[Footnote 14: Gray, China, i. 288.]

[Footnote 15: Wuttke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart_, § 609, p. 396 sq.]

But the survivors must not only avoid doing anything which might hurt the soul, they must also positively contribute to its comfort and subsistence. They often provide it with a dwelling, either burying the deceased in his own house, or erecting a tent or hut on his grave. Some Australian natives kindle a fire at a few yards' distance from the tomb, and repeat this until the soul is supposed to have gone somewhere else;[16] others, again, are in the habit of wrapping the body up in a rug, professedly for the purpose of keeping it warm.[17] In the Saxon district of Voigtland people have been known to {518} put into the coffin an umbrella and a pair of galoshes.[18] An extremely prevalent custom is to place provisions in or upon the grave, and very commonly feasts are given for the dead.[19] Weapons, implements, and other movables are deposited in the tomb; domestic animals are buried or slaughtered at the funeral;[20] and, as we have seen before, even human beings are sacrificed to the dead to serve them as companions or attendants, or to vivify their spirits with their blood, or to gratify their craving for revenge.[21]

[Footnote 16: Roth, North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 165.]

[Footnote 17: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 79 sq.]

[Footnote 18: Kohler, Volksbrauch im Voigtlande, p. 441.]

[Footnote 19: See Tylor. op. cit. ch. xi. sq.; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 155 sqq., 257 sqq.; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 242 sqq.]

[Footnote 20: See Spencer, op. cit. i. 184 sqq.]

[Footnote 21: Supra, i. 472 sqq.]

The offerings made to the dead may be gifts presented to them by the survivors, but the regular funeral sacrifice consists of the deceased person's own individual property. Among savages the whole, or a large part, of it is often consigned to the grave or destroyed.[22] The right of ownership does not cease with death where the belief prevails that the dead stand in need of earthly chattels. The recognition of this right is also apparent in the severe condemnation of robbery or violation committed at a tomb. Among various North American tribes such an act was regarded as an offence of the first magnitude and provoked cruel revenge.[23] Of the Chippewa Indians it is said that however bad a person may be or however much inclined to steal, the things left at a grave, valuable or not, are never touched, being sacred to the spirit of the {519} dead.[24] Among the Maoris "the least violation of any portion of the precincts of the dead is accounted the greatest crime that a human being can commit, and is visited with the direst revenge of a surviving tribe."[25] The laws of Athens[26] and Rome[27] and the ancient Teutonic law-books[28] punished with great severity the plunder of a corpse or a tomb. In Rome the punishment was death if the offence was committed by force, otherwise condemnation to the mines.

[Footnote 22: Boas, 'Central Eskimo,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. vi. 580. Murdoch, 'Ethn. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' ibid. ix. 424 sq. (Point Barrow Eskimo). Powell, ibid. iii. p. lvii. (North American Indians). Yarrow, 'Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians,' ibid. i. 98 (Pimas), 100 (Comanches). McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' ibid. xv. 178. Roth, op. cit. p. 164 (certain Queensland tribes). Colenso, Maori Races of New Zealand, p. 57. Kolff, Voyages of the Dourga, p. 166 sq. (Arru Islanders). Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars, p. 304 (Kar Nicobarese). Batchelor, Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 560 sq. Georgi, Russia, iv. 152 (Burats). Caillié, Travels through Central Africa, i. 164 (Bagos). Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 107 (Monbuttu). Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 79 (Barotse). Strabo, xi. 4. 8 (Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus). See also Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 185 sq.; Post, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, p. 295 sq.; Idem, Grundriss der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, ii. 173 sq.; infra, p. 514 sq.]

[Footnote 23: Sagard, Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 288. Gibbs, 'Tribes of Western Washington and North-western Oregon,' in Contributions to North American Ethnology, i. 204.]

[Footnote 24: Reid, 'Religious Belief of the Ojibois,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. iii. 112.]

[Footnote 25: Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders_, i. 111 sq.]

[Footnote 26: Cicero, De legibus, ii. 26. See also Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 105 sq.]

[Footnote 27: Digesta, xlvii. 12, 'De sepulchro violato.']

[Footnote 28: Wilda, Das Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 975 sqq.]

Like living men the dead are sensitive to insults and fond of praise; hence respect must be shown for their honour and self-regarding pride. De mortuis nil nisi bonum; [Greek: ou) ga\r e)sthla\ katthanou=si kertomei=n e)p' a)ndra/sin].[29] In Greece custom required that at the funeral meal the virtues of the deceased should be enumerated and extolled,[30] and calumny against a dead person was punished by law.[31] The same was the case in ancient Egypt.[32] In Greenland, after the interment, the nearest male relative of the dead commemorated in a loud plaintive voice all the excellent qualities of the departed.[33] Among the Iroquois the near relatives and friends approached the body in turn and addressed it in a laudatory speech.[34]

[Footnote 29: Archilochus, Reliquiæ, 40.]

[Footnote 30: Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 122 sq.]

[Footnote 31: Rohde, Psyche, p. 224.]

[Footnote 32: Diodorus Siculus, i. 92. 5. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 322.]

[Footnote 33: Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 218.]

[Footnote 34: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 175, n. 2.]

The dead also demand obedience and are anxious that the rules they laid down while alive should be followed by the survivors. Hence the sacredness which is attached to a will;[35] hence also, in a large measure, the rigidity of ancestral custom. The greatest dread of the natives of South-Eastern Africa "is to offend their ancestors and the only way to avoid this is to do everything according to {520} traditional usage."[36] Among the Basutos "the anger of the deified generations could not be more directly provoked than by a departure from the precepts and examples they have left behind them."[37] The E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast have a proverb which runs:--"Follow the customs of your father. What he did not do, avoid doing, or you will harm yourself."[38] Among the Aleuts the old men always impress upon the native youth the great importance of strictly observing the customs of their forefathers in conducting the chase and other matters, as any neglect in this respect would be sure to bring upon them disaster and punishment.[39] The Kamchadales, says Steller, consider it a sin to do anything which is contrary to the precepts of their ancestors.[40] The Papuans of the Motu district, in New Guinea, believe that when men and women are bad--adulterers, thieves, quarrellers, and the like--the spirits of the dead are angry with them.[41] One of the most powerful sentiments in the mind of a Chinese is his reverence for ancestral custom; and in a large sense Japan also is still a country governed by the voices that are hushed.[42] The life of the ancient Roman was beset with a society of departed kinsmen whose displeasure he provoked if he varied from the practice handed down from his fathers. The expression mos majorum, "the custom of the elders," was used by him as a charm against innovation.[43]

[Footnote 35: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 116 (Tahitians). Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 257. Sarbah, Fanti Customary Laws, p. 82. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 124 sq.]

[Footnote 36: Macdonald, Light in Africa, p. 192.]

[Footnote 37: Casalis, Basutos, p. 254.]

[Footnote 38: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 263.]

[Footnote 39: Elliott, Alaska and the Seal Islands, p. 170. Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, Report on the Population, &c. of Alaska, p. 156.]

[Footnote 40: Steller, Beschreibung von Kamtschatka, p. 274.]

[Footnote 41: Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 169.]

[Footnote 42: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 308. Hozumi, Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law, p. 1, &c.]

[Footnote 43: Granger, 'Moral Life of the Early Romans,' in Internal. Jour. of Ethics, vii. 287. Idem, _Worship of the Romans_, pp. 65, 66, 138.]

Besides such duties to the dead as are similar in nature to those which men owe to their living fellow men or superiors, there are obligations of a different character arising from the fact of death itself. The funeral, the rites connected with it, and the mourning customs are largely regarded as duties to the dead.

{521} The grave is represented as a place where the deceased finds his desired rest, and if denied proper burial he is believed not only to walk but to suffer. The Iroquois considered that unless the rites of burial were performed, the spirits of the dead had to wander for a time upon the earth in a state of great unhappiness; hence their extreme solicitude to recover the bodies of their slain in battle.[44] The Abipones regard it as the greatest misfortune for the dead to be left to rot in the open air, and they therefore inter even the smallest bone of a departed friend.[45] In Ashantee the spirits of those who for some reason or other have been deprived of the customary funeral rites are doomed, in the imagination of the people, to haunt the gloom of the forest, stealing occasionally to their former abodes in rare but lingering visits, troubling and bewitching their neglectful relatives.[46] The Negroes of Accra believe that happiness in a future life depends not only upon courage, power, and wealth in this world, but also upon a proper burial.[47] In some Australian tribes the souls of those whose bodies have been left to lie unburied are supposed to have to prowl on the face of the earth and about the place of death, with no gratification but to harm the living;[48] or there is said to be no future existence for them, as their bodies will be devoured by crows and native dogs.[49] Among the Bataks of Sumatra nothing is considered to be a greater disgrace to a person than to be denied a grave; for by not being held worthy of burial he is declared to be spiritually dead.[50] The Samoans believed that the souls of unburied friends, for instance such as had been drowned or had fallen in war, haunted them everywhere, crying out in a pitiful tone, "Oh, how cold! Oh, how cold!"[51] According to Karen ideas the {522} spirits of those who die a natural death and are decently buried go to a beautiful country and renew their earthly life, whereas the ghosts of persons who by accident are left uninterred will wander about the earth, occasionally showing themselves to mankind.[52] Confucius connected the disposal of the dead immediately with the great virtue of submission and devotion to superiors.[53] No act is in China recognised more worthy a virtuous man than that of interring stray bones and covering up exposed coffins,[54] and to bury a person who is without friends is considered to be as great a merit as to save life.[55] It is also held highly important to provide the proper place for a grave; the Taouists maintain that "if a coffin be interred in an improper spot, the spirit of the dead is made unhappy, and avenges itself by causing sickness and other calamities to the relatives who have not taken sufficient care for its repose."[56] The ancient Chaldeans believed that the spirits of the unburied dead, having neither place of repose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country, occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing the living.[57] In classical antiquity it was the most sacred of duties to give the body its funeral rites,[58] and the Greeks referred the right of sepulture to the gods as its authors.[59]

[Footnote 44: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 175.]

[Footnote 45: Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 284.]

[Footnote 46: Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 262 sq.]

[Footnote 47: Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 4.]

[Footnote 48: Oldfield, 'Aborigines of Australia,' in _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ N.S. iii. 228, 236 sq.]

[Footnote 49: Chauncy, in Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 280.]

[Footnote 50: Buning, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 75.]

[Footnote 51: Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 233. Hood, Cruise in H.M.S. "Fawn" in the Western Pacific, p. 142.]

[Footnote 52: Cross, quoted by Mac Mahon, Far Cathay, p. 202 sq. Mason, 'Religion, &c. among the Karens,' in _Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, xxxiv. pt. ii. 203.]

[Footnote 53: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 659.]

[Footnote 54: Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 147, n. 11.]

[Footnote 55: Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 161.]

[Footnote 56: Legge, Religions of China, p. 200.]

[Footnote 57: Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 689. Jeremias, Die babylonisch-assyrischen Vorstellungen vom Leben nach dem Tode, p. 54 sqq. Halévy, Mélanges de critique et d'histoire relatifs aux peuples sémitiques, p. 368.]

[Footnote 58: See Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 97 sqq.; Granger, Worship of the Romans, p. 37 sqq.; Aust, Die Religion der Römer, p. 226 sq.]

[Footnote 59: Sophocles, Antigone, 454 sq. Euripides, Supplices, 563.]

So also among peoples who practise cremation the dead themselves are considered to be benefited by being burned. The Nâyars of Malabar are of opinion that no time should be lost in setting about the funeral, as the disposal of a corpse either by cremation or burial as soon {523} as possible after death is conducive to the happiness of the spirit of the departed; they say that "the collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the dead gives peace to his spirit."[60] The Thlinkets maintain that those whose bodies are burned will be warm and comfortable in the other world, whereas others will have to suffer from cold. "Burn my body! Burn me!" pleaded a dying Thlinket; "I fear the cold. Why should I go shivering through all the ages and the distances of the next world?"[61] The ancient Persians, on the other hand, considered both cremation and burial to be sins for which there was no atonement, and exposed their dead on the summits of mountains, thinking it a great misfortune if neither birds nor beasts devoured their carcases.[62] So also the Samoyedes and Mongols held it to be good for the deceased if his corpse was soon devoured by beasts,[63] and the Kamchadales regarded it as a great blessing to be eaten by a beautiful dog.[64] The East African Masai, who likewise, as a rule, expose their dead to the wild beasts, say that if the corpse is eaten by the hyænas the first night, the deceased must have been a good man, as the hyænas are supposed to act by the command of 'Ng ais, or God.[65]

[Footnote 60: Fawcett, 'Nâyars of Malabar,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iii. 245, 251.]

[Footnote 61: Dall, Alaska, p. 423. Petroff, op. cit. p. 175. McNair Wright, Among the Alaskans, p. 333.]

[Footnote 62: Vendîdâd, i. 13, 17; vi. 45 sqq.; viii. 10. Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxxv. sqq. Agathias, Historiæ, ii. 22 sq. (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, Ser. Graeca, lxxxviii. 1377). Herodotus, i. 140; iii. 16.]

[Footnote 63: Preuss, Die Begräbnisarten der Amerikaner und Nordostasiaten, p. 272. Cf. Yarrow, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. i. 103 (Caddoes or Timber Indians).]

[Footnote 64: Steller, op. cit. p. 273.]

[Footnote 65: Merker, Die Masai, p. 193.]

Certain ceremonies are professedly performed for the purpose of preventing evil spirits from doing harm to the dead.[66] This is sometimes the case with cremation; we are told that among some Siberian peoples the dead are burned so as to be "effectually removed from the machinations of spirits."[67] The Teleutes believe that the {524} spirits of the earth do much mischief to the departed; hence their shamans drive them off at the funeral by striking the air several times with an axe.[68] In Christian countries the passing-bell has likewise been supposed to repel evil spirits.[69]

[Footnote 66: See Frazer, 'Certain Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 87 sq.; Hertz, 'La représentation collective de la mort,' in L'année sociologique, x., 1905-1906, p. 56 sq.]

[Footnote 67: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 264.]

[Footnote 68: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 264.]

[Footnote 69: Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 87.]

Fasting after a death is regarded as a dutiful tribute to the dead; the Chinese say that it is "a means of raising the mind up to the soul, a means to enable the sacrificer to perform in a more perfect way the acts of worship incumbent upon him, by bringing about a closer contact between himself and the soul."[70] The self-mutilations performed by the relatives of the dead are supposed to be pleasing to him as tokens of affliction;[71] and the same is of course the case with the lamentations at funerals. In some Central Australian tribes the custom of painting the body of a mourner is said to have as its object "to render him or her more conspicuous, and so to allow the spirit to see that it is being properly mourned for."[72] The mourning dress is a sign of regard for the dead. Nay, even the custom of not mentioning his name is looked upon in the same light. Some peoples maintain that to name him would be to disturb his rest,[73] or that he would take it as an indication that his relatives are not properly mourning for him, and would feel it as an insult.[74]

[Footnote 70: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 657.]

[Footnote 71: Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 216 sqq.]

[Footnote 72: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 511.]

[Footnote 73: Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 233 (Greenlanders). Tout, 'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 138. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 27 (Samoyedes).]

[Footnote 74: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498.]

As the duties to the living, so the duties to the dead are greatly influenced by the relationship between the parties. Everywhere the obligation to satisfy the wants of the deceased is incumbent upon those who were nearest to him whilst alive. In the archaic State, as we have seen, it is considered the greatest misfortune which can befall a person to die without descendants, since in such a case there would be nobody to attend to his soul.[75] Confucius {525} said, "For a man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him is flattery."[76] The distinction between a tribesman or fellow countryman and a stranger also applies to the dead. In Greenland a stranger without relatives or friends was generally suffered to lie unburied.[77] Among North American Indians it is permitted to scalp warriors of a hostile tribe, whereas "there is no example of an Indian having taken the scalp of a man of his own tribe, or of one belonging to a nation in alliance with his own, and whom he may have killed in a quarrel or a fit of anger";[78] and an Indian who would never think of desecrating the grave of a tribesman may have "no such scruple in regard to the graves of another tribe."[79] Yet already from early times we hear of the recognition of certain duties even to strangers and enemies. The Greeks of the post-Homeric age made it a rule to deliver up a slain enemy so that he should receive the proper funeral rites.[80] It was considered a disgraceful act of Lysander not to accord burial to Philocles, the Athenian general at Aegospotami, together with about four thousand prisoners whom he put to the sword;[81] and the Athenians themselves boasted that their ancestors had with their own hands buried the Persians who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, holding it to be "a sacred and imperative duty to cover with earth a human corpse."[82] According to the Chinese penal code, "destroying, mutilating, or throwing into the water the unenclosed and unburied corpse of a stranger," though a much less serious crime than the same injury inflicted upon the corpse of a relative, is yet an offence punishable with 100 blows, and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 lee.[83]

[Footnote 75: Supra, ii. 400 sqq.]

[Footnote 76: Lun Yü, ii. 24. 1.]

[Footnote 77: Cranz, op. cit. i. 218.]

[Footnote 78: Domenech, _Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America_, ii. 357.]

[Footnote 79: Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 162.]

[Footnote 80: Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 100 sqq. Rohde, op. cit. p. 200 sq.]

[Footnote 81: Pausanias, ix. 32. 9.]

[Footnote 82: Ibid. i. 32. 5; ix. 32. 9.]

[Footnote 83: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. cclxxvi. p. 295.]

The duties to the dead also vary according to the age, {526} sex, and social position of the departed. Among the natives of Australia children and women are interred with but scant ceremony.[84] In the tribes of North-West-Central Queensland nobody paints his body in mourning for a young child.[85] In Eastern Central Africa the spirit of a child which dies when about four or five days of age gets nothing of the attention usually bestowed on the dead.[86] Among the Wadshagga married persons are buried in their huts, whilst the bodies of unmarried ones and especially children are put in some hidden place, where they are left to rot or be devoured by beasts.[87] Some Siberian tribes were formerly accustomed to inhume adults only, whereas the corpses of children were exposed on trees.[88] The natives of Port Jackson, in New South Wales, consigned their young people to the grave, but burned those who had passed middle age.[89] The Kondayamkottai Maravars, a Dravidian tribe of Tinnevelly in Southern India, bury the corpses of unmarried persons, whilst those of married ones are cremated.[90] In some other tribes in India burial is practised in the case of young children only,[91] and this has long been a rule of Brahmanism.[92] Among the Andaman Islanders, again, infants are buried within the encampment, whereas all other dead are carried to some distant and secluded spot in the jungle.[93] We meet with a kindred custom in the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa: in Karagwe and Nkole "children are buried in the huts themselves, grown-up people outside, generally in cultivated fields, or in such as are going to be cultivated."[94] The bodies of women are sometimes disposed of in a {527} different way from those of men. Thus among the Blackfeet Indians the latter were fastened in the branches of trees so high as to be beyond the reach of wolves, and then left to waste in the dry winds; whilst the body of a woman or child was thrown into the underbush or jungle, where it soon became the prey of the wild animals.[95] Among the Tuski (Chukchi), who cremate or rather boil the bodies of good men, women are not usually burned, on account of the scarcity of wood.[96]

[Footnote 84: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 89.]

[Footnote 85: Roth, op. cit. p. 164.]

[Footnote 86: Macdonald, Africana, i. 59.]

[Footnote 87: Volkens, Der Kilimandscharo, p. 253.]

[Footnote 88: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 31 (Koibales).]

[Footnote 89: Collins, English Colony of New South Wales, i. 601.]

[Footnote 90: Fawcett, 'Kondayamkottai Maravars,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiii. 64.]

[Footnote 91: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, i. 198 (Kotas). Fawcett, 'Nâyars of Malabar,' ibid. iii. 245.]

[Footnote 92: Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 273.]

[Footnote 93: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 144.]

[Footnote 94: Kollmann, Victoria Nyanza, p. 63 sq.]

[Footnote 95: Yarrow, _Introduction to the Study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 96: Dall, op. cit. p. 382.]

Class distinctions likewise influence the disposal of the dead. In some American tribes cremation seems to be reserved for persons of higher rank.[97] Among the pagans of Obubura Hill district in Southern Nigeria "the bodies of ordinary people are buried in the bush, sometimes being merely thrown on the ground, but those of chiefs and important men and women are buried in their huts or in the adjoining verandah."[98] The Masai throw away the corpses of ordinary persons to be eaten by hyænas, whereas medicine-men and influential people are buried.[99] The Nandi do not bury their dead unless they have been very important persons.[100] Among the Waganda, when a chief dies, he is buried in a wooden coffin, whilst the bodies of slaves are thrown into the jungle.[101] Some other African peoples throw the corpses of slaves into a morass or the nearest pool of water.[102] The Thlinkets committed them to the tender mercies of the sea.[103] Among the Maoris a slave would not be greatly bewailed after death, nor have his bones ceremonially scraped.[104] The Roman 'Law of the Twelve Tables' prohibited the bodies of slaves from being embalmed.[105] Moral distinctions, also, are noticeable in {528} the treatment of the dead. In some parts of Central America the bodies of men of high standing who had committed a crime were, like those of the common people, exposed to be devoured by wild beasts.[106] Among the Tuski the corpses of bad men were simply left to rot.[107] In Greenland the body of a dead malefactor was dismembered, and the separate limbs were thrown apart.[108] To the same class of facts belong the punishments which were inflicted upon the corpses of criminals in classical antiquity and formerly in Christian Europe.[109]

[Footnote 97: Preuss, op. cit. p. 301.]

[Footnote 98: Partridge, Cross River Natives, p. 237.]

[Footnote 99: Hollis, op. cit. pp. 304, 305, 307; Eliot, ibid. p. xx.]

[Footnote 100: Johnston, Uganda, ii. 880.]

[Footnote 101: Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, i. 188.]

[Footnote 102: Denham and Clapperton, _Travels in Northern and Central Africa_, ii. 64 (natives of Kano). Pogge, _Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo_, p. 243 (Kalunda).]

[Footnote 103: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,' in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ, iv. 323. Dall, op. cit. pp. 417, 420.]

[Footnote 104: Colenso, op. cit. p. 30.]

[Footnote 105: Lex Duodecim Tabularum, x. 6.]

[Footnote 106: Preuss, op. cit. p. 301.]

[Footnote 107: Dall, op. cit. p. 382.]

[Footnote 108: Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 64.]

[Footnote 109: Ayrault, Des procez faicts au cadaver, p. 5 sqq. Trummer, Vorträge über Tortur, &c. i. 455 sqq. Supra, ii. 254.]

From this survey of facts we shall now pass to a consideration of the causes from which the duties to the dead have sprung. In the first place, there can be no doubt that these duties to a considerable extent are based upon the feeling of sympathetic resentment, in the same way as is the case with duties to living persons. Death does not entirely extinguish the affection which was felt for a person whilst he was alive. The rites and customs connected with a death are very largely similar to or identical with natural expressions of grief, and in spite of their ceremonial character it is impossible to believe that they are altogether counterfeit. We are told by trustworthy eye-witnesses that, although the self-inflicted pain and the loud lamentations which form part of a funeral among the Australian blacks are not to be taken as a measure of the grief actually felt, this expression of despair "is not all artificial or professional";[110] and Mr. Man believes that among the Andaman Islanders "in the majority of cases the display of grief is thoroughly sincere."[111] But the dead also inspire other feelings than sympathy and sorrow, and the duties towards them have consequently a complex origin.

[Footnote 110: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 44. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 510 sq.]

[Footnote 111: Man, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 145.]

The souls of the dead are not generally supposed to lead a merely passive existence. They are conceived as {529} capable of acting upon the living, of conferring upon them benefits, or at all events of inflicting upon them harm. Death has in some respects enhanced their powers. They know what is going on upon earth, what those whom they have left behind are doing. Their power of acting, also, is greater than that which they possessed when they were tied to the flesh. They are raised to a higher sphere of influence; magic properties are ascribed even to their corpses. Their character may remain on the whole unchanged, and so, too, their affection for their surviving friends. Hence they often become guardians of their descendants. Among the Amazulu the head of each house is worshipped by his children; remembering his kindness to them while he was living, they say, "He will still treat us in the same way now he is dead."[112] The Herero invoke the blessings of their deceased friends or relatives, praying for success against their enemies, an abundance of cattle, numerous wives, and prosperity in their undertakings.[113] On the West African Slave Coast the head of a family, after death, often becomes its protector, and is sometimes regarded as the guardian of a whole community or village.[114] The Mpongwe teach the child "to look up to the parent not only as its earthly protector, but as a friend in the spirit-land."[115] The Gournditch-mara in Australia believed that "the spirit of the deceased father or grandfather occasionally visited the male descendant in dreams, and imparted to him charms (songs) against disease or against witchcraft."[116] The Veddah of Ceylon invokes the spirits of his departed relatives "as sympathetic and kindred, though higher powers than man, to direct him to a life pleasing to the gods, through which he may gain their protection or favour."[117] The Nay[=a]dis of Malabar, on certain ceremonial occasions, offer solemn prayers that the souls of the {530} departed may protect them from the ravages of wild beasts and snakes.[118] The Vedic people called upon the aid of their dead:--"O Fathers, may the sky-people grant us life; may we follow the course of the living."[119] So also the Zoroastrian Fravashis, who corresponded to the Vedic "Fathers," helped their own kindred, borough, town, or country.[120] Aeschylus, in his 'Eumenides,' represents Orestes as saying, "My father will send me aid from the tomb."[121] The Lar Familiaris, the spirit guardian of the Roman family, was undoubtedly the spirit of a deceased ancestor.[122] The old Slavonians believed that the souls of fathers watched over their children and their children's children. In Galicia the people still think that their hearths are haunted by the souls of the dead, who make themselves useful to the family; and among the Czechs, it is a common belief that departed ancestors look after the fields and herds of their descendants and assist them in hunting and fishing.[123]

[Footnote 112: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 144 sq.]

[Footnote 113: Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 222.]

[Footnote 114: Ellis, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples, p. 104. See also ibid. p. 24 (Slave and Gold Coast natives).]

[Footnote 115: Wilson, Western Africa, p. 394.]

[Footnote 116: Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 278.]

[Footnote 117: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 194.]

[Footnote 118: Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 72.]

[Footnote 119: Rig-Veda, x. 57. 5. Cf. Hopkins, op. cit. p. 143 sq.]

[Footnote 120: Yasts, xiii. 66 sqq.; &c.]

[Footnote 121: Aeschylus, Eumenides, 598.]

[Footnote 122: Jevons, in Plutarch's Romane Questions, p. xli. Rohde, op. cit. p. 232.]

[Footnote 123: Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 119, 121. For other instances of a similar kind see Shooter, Kafirs of Natal, p. 161; Arbousset and Daumas, Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 340 (Bechuanas); Casalis, Basutos, p. 248; Wilken, Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel, p. 194 sqq.; Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 290 (Greenlanders); Jessen, Afhandling over de Norske Finners og Lappers Hedenske Religion, p. 27; Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, p. 115 sq.; von Düben, Lappland, p. 249; Abercromby, Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, i. 178 (Mordvins); von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 43 sqq. (Gypsies).]

But the ancestral guardian spirit does not bestow his favours for nothing. He must be properly attended to,[124] and if neglected he easily becomes positively dangerous to his living relatives. The same Africans who invoke the dead in adversity think them "capable of wreaking their vengeance on those who do not liberally minister to their wants and enjoyments."[125] The Chaldeans believed that {531} the departed who otherwise carefully watched over the welfare of his children, if abandoned and forgotten, avenged himself for their neglect by returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack them, and by ruining them with his imprecations.[126] The Vedic poet prays to the Fathers, "May ye not injure us for whatever impiety we have as men committed."[127] The Fravashis come to the help of those only who treat them well, and are "dreadful unto those who vex them."[128] In Rome, according to Ovid, once upon a time when the great festival of the dead was not observed, and the manes failed to receive the customary gifts, the injured spirits revenged themselves on the living, and the city "became heated by the suburban funeral pyres."[129] So also, according to Slavonic beliefs, the dead "might be induced, if proper respect was not paid to them, to revenge themselves on their forgetful survivors."[130]

[Footnote 124: Wilken, op. cit. p. 194 sq. (peoples in the Malay Archipelago). Abercromby, op. cit. i. 178 (Mordvins). Jessen, op. cit. p. 27; Friis, op. cit. p. 116 sq. (Laplanders).]

[Footnote 125: Rowley, Religion of the Africans, p. 90.]

[Footnote 126: Halevy, op. cit. p. 368.]

[Footnote 127: Rig-Veda, x. 15. 6.]

[Footnote 128: Yasts, xiii. 31, 42, 51, 70, &c.]

[Footnote 129: Ovid, Fasti, ii. 549 sqq.]

[Footnote 130: Ralston, op. cit. p. 335.]

Moreover, we must not conclude that wherever the spirits of deceased ancestors are invoked as guardians they are necessarily looked upon as essentially benevolent to their descendants.[131] Concerning the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians Professor Jastrow writes:--"In general the dead were not favorably disposed towards the living, and they were inclined to use what power they had to work evil rather than for good. In this respect they resembled the demons, and it is noticeable that an important class of demons was known by the name ekimmu, which is one of the common terms for the shades of the dead."[132] The Greeks were much afraid of their dead, and regarded their "heroes" as extremely irritable, in later times as exclusively malicious.[133] It appears from Ovid's 'Fasti' that fear was the predominant feeling of the Romans with reference to the spirits of the departed, who were supposed {532} to wander about by night, causing men to pine away or bewitching them into madness.[134] Even in China, where the souls of the dead are supposed effectually to control the destiny of the living,[135] malevolent rather than benevolent inclinations are ascribed to them by the popular belief, as appears from the fact that the words for "ghost" and "devil" are the same and form a portion of the objectionable epithets applied to foreigners.[136] Generally speaking, my collection of facts has led me to the conclusion that the dead are more commonly regarded as enemies than friends,[137] and that Professor Jevons[138] and Mr. Grant Allen[139] are mistaken in their assertion that, according to early beliefs, the malevolence of the dead is for the most part directed against strangers only, whereas they exercise a fatherly care over the lives and fortunes of their descendants and fellow clansmen.

[Footnote 131: Cf. Karsten, Origin of Worship, p. 122 sqq.]

[Footnote 132: Jastrow, op. cit. p. 581.]

[Footnote 133: Rohde, op. cit. pp. 177 sqq., 225 n. 4. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 130.]

[Footnote 134: Ovid, Fasti, v. 429 sqq. Granger, Worship of the Romans, p. 67.]

[Footnote 135: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. v. book) ii. 464.]

[Footnote 136: Dennys, Folk-Lore of China, p. 73. See also Legge, Religions of China, pp. 13, 201.]

[Footnote 137: Dr. Steinmetz (Ethnol. Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, i. 283) has arrived at the same conclusion. See also Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 301 sqq.; Karsten, op. cit. p. 115 sqq.]

[Footnote 138: Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 53 sq.]

[Footnote 139: Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 347 sq.]

Thus the Bondeis in East Africa apparently make little difference between a devil and a departed ancestor.[140] Among the Fjort of Loango the good people who have left this life "are generally considered the enemies of mankind."[141] Other Africans maintain that the spirits of the dead hover in the air, "watching the destiny of friends, haunting houses, killing children, injuring cattle, and causing disease and destruction," all being malevolent to the living.[142] Of the Savage Islanders in Polynesia we are told that "no effort of the missionary can avail to break them of their belief in the malevolence of ghosts, even of those who loved them best in life; the spirits of the dead seem compelled to work ill to the living without their own volition."[143] In Tahiti the spirits of parents and children, sisters and brothers, "seemed to have been regarded as a sort of {533} demons."[144] Among the Maoris "the nearest and most beloved relatives were supposed to have their natures changed by death, and to become malignant, even towards those they formerly loved."[145] The natives of Erromanga, in the New Hebrides, maintained that all the spirits of their departed ancestors were evil, and roamed the earth doing harm to men.[146] In the tribes inhabiting the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, all dead ancestors are supposed to be constantly on the watch to deal out sickness or death to anyone who may displease them; hence the natives are most particular to do nothing that should raise their anger.[147] Australian natives believe that a deceased person is malevolent for a long time after death, and the more nearly related the more he is feared.[148] The anitos or ghosts, of the Tagales in the Philippine Islands are likewise perpetually anxious to do harm to their descendants, trying to kill people, especially shortly after death, and being the causes of nearly all diseases.[149] The Saora of the Madras Presidency only know the existence of the departed souls by the mischief they do, and think that all ills are occasioned either by ancestral spirits or gods.[150] In the North-Western Provinces of India the díwárs, or genii loci, are oftentimes "the spirits of good men, Brahmans, or village heroes, who manage, when they become objects of worship, to be generally considered very malicious devils";[151] and the ghosts of all low caste natives are notoriously malignant.[152] The Tibetans are of opinion that a ghost is always malicious, and that it returns and gives troubles either on account of its malevolence or its desire to see how its former property is being disposed of.[153] The Finns and other peoples of the same stock believed that the souls of the dead were generally intent to do harm to the living, their nearest relatives included.[154] Thus, according to Votyak ideas, even a mother may become {534} the enemy of her own child from the moment of her death.[155] Among the Ainu of Japan, "if a man is at a loss for the authorship of any particular calamity, which has befallen him, he is very apt to refer it to the ghost of a dead wife, mother, grandmother, or, still more certainly, to that of a dead mother-in-law";[156] an Ainu who accompanied Mr. Batchelor would on no account come within twenty-five or thirty yards of the spot where his own mother was burned.[157] The Koniagas believe that after death every man becomes a devil.[158] According to ideas prevalent among the Central Eskimo, the dead are at first malevolent spirits who frequently roam around the villages, causing sickness and mischief and killing men by their touch; but subsequently they are supposed to attain to rest and are no longer feared.[159] The Tarahumares of Mexico are afraid of their dead; a mother asks her deceased infant to go away and not to come back, and the weeping widow implores her husband not to carry off, or do harm to, his own sons or daughters.[160] Mr. Bridges informs us that the Fuegian word for a ghost, cúshpich, is also an adjective signifying "frightful, dreadful, awful."[161]

[Footnote 140: Dale, 'Natives inhabiting the Bondei Country,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxv. 233.]

[Footnote 141: Dennett, Folklore of the Fjort, p. 11 sq.]

[Footnote 142: Burton, Lake Regions of Central Africa, ii. 344.]

[Footnote 143: Thomson, Savage Island, p. 94.]

[Footnote 144: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 334 sq.]

[Footnote 145: Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 18. See also ibid. pp. 137, 221; Polack, op. cit. i. 242.]

[Footnote 146: Robertson, Erromanga, p. 389.]

[Footnote 147: Guise, 'Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the Wanigela River,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxviii. 216.]

[Footnote 148: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 80. Curr, The Australian Race, i. 87.]

[Footnote 149: Blumentritt, in Mittheil. d. kais. u. kön. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien, p. 166 sqq. de Mas, Informe sobre el estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, 'Orijen de los habitantes de la Oceania,' p. 15; 'Poblacion,' p. 29. Cf. ibid. 'Poblacion,' p. 17; Blumentritt, p. 168 (Igorrotes).]

[Footnote 150: Fawcett, Saoras, pp. 43, 51.]

[Footnote 151: Elliot, Races of the North Western Provinces of India, p. 243.]

[Footnote 152: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 269.]

[Footnote 153: Waddell, Buddhism of Tibet, p. 498.]

[Footnote 154: Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar, iii. 121 sqq. Waronen, _Vainajainpalvelus muinaisilla Suomalaisilla_, p. 23.]

[Footnote 155: Buch, 'Die Wotjäken,' in _Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ_, xii. 607.]

[Footnote 156: Howard, Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, p. 196.]

[Footnote 157: Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 220 sq.]

[Footnote 158: Holmberg, in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ, iv. 402.]

[Footnote 159: Boas, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. vi. 591.]

[Footnote 160: Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, i. 380, 382.]

[Footnote 161: Bridges, 'Manners and Customs of the Firelanders,' in A Voice for South America, xiii. 211.]

The belief in the irritable or malevolent character of the dead is easily explained. As Bishop Butler observed, we presume that a thing will remain as it is except when we have some reason to think that it will be altered.[162] And in the case of the souls of departed friends men may have reason to suppose that they undergo a change. Death is commonly regarded as the gravest of all misfortunes; hence the dead are believed to be exceedingly dissatisfied with their fate. According to primitive ideas a person only dies if he is killed--by magic if not by force,--and such a death naturally tends to make the soul revengeful and ill-tempered. It is envious of the living and is longing for the company of its old friends; no wonder, then, that it sends them diseases to cause their {535} death. The Basutos maintain that their dead ancestors are continually endeavouring to draw them to themselves, and therefore attribute to them every disease;[163] and the Tarahumares in Mexico suppose that the dead make their relatives ill from a feeling of loneliness, that they, too, may die and join the departed.[164] But the notion that the disembodied soul is on the whole a malicious being constantly watching for an opportunity to do harm to the living is also, no doubt, intimately connected with the instinctive fear of the dead, which is in its turn the outcome of the fear of death.

[Footnote 162: Butler, Analogy of Religion, i. 1, p. 82.]

[Footnote 163: Casalis, op. cit. p. 249.]

[Footnote 164: Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, i. 380.]

We are told, it is true, that many savages meet death with much indifference, or regard it as no great evil, but merely as a change to a life very similar to this.[165] But it is a fact often noticed among ourselves, that a person on the verge of death may resign himself to his fate with the greatest calmness, although he has been afraid to die throughout his life. Moreover, the fear of death may be disguised by thoughtlessness, checked by excitement, or mitigated by dying in company. There are peoples who are conspicuous for their bravery, and yet have a great dread of death.[166] Nobody is entirely free from this feeling, though it varies greatly in strength among different races and in different individuals. In many savages it is so strongly developed, that they cannot bear to hear death mentioned.[167] And inseparably mingled with {536} this fear of death is the fear of the dead. The place in which a death occurs is abandoned,[168] or the hut is destroyed,[169] or the corpse is carried out from it as speedily as possible.[170] The survivors endeavour to frighten away the ghost by firing off guns,[171] or shooting into the grave,[172] or throwing sticks and stones behind themselves after they have interred the corpse.[173] To prevent the return of the ghost the body is buried face downwards,[174] or its limbs are firmly tied,[175] or, in extreme cases, it is fixed in the ground with a stake driven through it.[176] We may assume that these and many other funeral ceremonies are very closely connected with the fear of the pollution of death; for even when their immediate object is to keep the ghost at {537} a distance, it is likely that they are largely due to dread of its presence for the reason that it is conceived as a seat of deadly contagion.[177] It seems to me that certain anthropologists, in their explanations of funeral ceremonies, have too much accentuated the volitional activity of ghosts. To take an instance. The common custom of carrying the dead body away through some aperture other than the door,[178] has generally been interpreted as a means of preventing the ghost from finding its way back to the old home; but various facts indicate that it also may have sprung from a desire to keep the ordinary exit free from pollution. According to the Vendîdâd a spirit of death is breathing all along the way which a corpse has passed; hence no man, no flock, no being whatever that belongs to the world of Ahura Mazda is allowed to go that way until the deadly breath has been blown away to hell.[179] In the capital of Corea there is a small gate in the city-wall known as the "Gate of the Dead," through which alone a dead body can be carried out, and no one is ever allowed to enter through that passage-way.[180] In China even a messenger who delivers tidings of death strictly abstains from passing the threshold of the houses at which he knocks, unless urgently requested by the inmates to walk in.[181] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia a mourner, who is regarded as unclean, "must not use the house door, but a separate door is cut for his use"; girls at puberty, whilst in a state of uncleanness, may leave {538} and enter their room only through a hole made in the floor;[182] and men who have polluted themselves by partaking of human flesh are for four months allowed to go out only by the secret door in the rear of the house.[183] Even the water and fire ceremonies performed in connection with a death have been represented as methods of preventing the ghost from attacking the living by placing a physical barrier of water or fire between them.[184] But I see no reason whatever to assume, with Sir J. G. Frazer, that "the conceptions of pollution and purification are merely the fictions of a later age, invented to explain the purpose of a ceremony of which the original intention was forgotten."[185]

[Footnote 165: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo), 269 sq. (Hudson Bay Indians). de Brebeuf, 'Relation de ce qui s'est passé dans le pays des Hurons,' in Relations des Jésuites, i. 1636, p. 129. Roth, North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 161. Tregear, 'Niue,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. ii. 14 (Savage Islanders). Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 204 sq. Romilly, From my Verandah in New Guinea, p. 45 (Solomon Islanders). Georgi, op. cit. iii. 266 (Siberian shamans). Monrad, op. cit. p. 23 (Negroes of Accra). Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 72.]

[Footnote 166: E.g., the Kalmucks (Bergmann, Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken, ii. 318 sqq.) and the ancient Caribs (Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 215).]

[Footnote 167: Dunbar, 'Pawnee Indians,' in Magazine of American History, viii. 742. Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 203. Bergmann, op. cit. ii. 318. Bosman, Description of the Coast of Guinea, p. 327 (Negroes of Fida). Du Chaillu, Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 338. Kropf, Das Volk der Xosa-Kaffern, p. 155. For other instances of savages' great fear of death, see Bridges, in A Voice for South America, xiii. 211 (Fuegians); Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 215 (Caribs); Dunbar, in Magazine of American History, v. 334 (various North American tribes); Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 238; Georgi, op. cit. ii. 400 (Jakuts); Bosman, op. cit. p. 130 (Gold Coast natives).]

[Footnote 168: Dorman, op. cit. p. 22 (North American Indians). von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 502 (Bororó). Hyades and Deniker, Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, vii. 379 (Fuegians). Curr, The Australian Race, i. 44. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 82. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498. Worcester, Philippine Islands, p. 496 (Tagbanuas of Busuanga). Bailey, 'Veddahs of Ceylon,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N. S. ii. 296; Deschamps, Carnet d'un voyageur, p. 383 (Veddahs). Decle, op. cit. p. 79 (Barotse). von Düben, Lappland, pp. 241, 249.]

[Footnote 169: Hyades and Deniker, op. cit. vii. 379 (Fuegians). Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 222 sq. Worcester, op. cit. p. 108 sq. (Tagbanuas of Palawan). Butler, _Travels in Assam_, p. 228. Fawcett, Saoras, p. 50 sq. Cunningham, Uganda, p. 130 (Bavuma).]

[Footnote 170: Howard, op. cit. p. 197 (Ainu). Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. 89 (Dyaks). The rapid pace of the funeral procession among the Bataks (von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 235) probably belongs to the same class of facts.]

[Footnote 171: von Brenner, op. cit. p. 235 (Bataks). Fawcett, Saoras, p. 46 sq.]

[Footnote 172: von Brenner, op. cit. p. 235 (Bataks). von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Magyaren, p. 134.]

[Footnote 173: Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, i. 45 (Aheriya, in Duâb), 287 (Bhangi, the sweeper tribe of Hindustan). Ralston, op. cit. p. 320 (ancient Bohemians).]

[Footnote 174: Dorsey, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 420 (Omahas). Crooke, op. cit. i. 44 (Aheriya, in Duâb).]

[Footnote 175: Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 402 (Vedic people). Turner, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 191 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow, ibid. i. 98 (Pimas of Arizona). Southey, History of Brazil, i. 248 (Tupinambas). Of the trussing and tying of the dead body which is practised in various Australian tribes the blacks themselves say that it is done "to prevent the spirit of the deceased from wandering in the night from its bed, and disturbing the living and doing them harm" (Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 79 sq.; see also Curr, The Australian Race, i. 44, 87).]

[Footnote 176: Supra, ii. 256. Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wirdarne, i. 472 (Middle Ages).]

[Footnote 177: Cf. supra, ii. 303. For the contagion of death see also Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 95 sqq.]

[Footnote 178: Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 26 sq. Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 69 sq. Trumbull, _Threshold Covenant_, p. 23 sqq. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, pp. 372, 373, 414 sq. Lippert, _Christenthum, Volksglaube und Volksbrauch_, p. 391 sq. Egede, Description of Greenland, p. 152 sq.; Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 245 sq. (Greenlanders). Turner, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 191 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). McNair Wright, Among the Alaskans, p. 313. Jochelson, 'Koryak Religion', in Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vi. 110 sq. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 26 sq.; Jackson, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Ramseyer and Kühne, _Four Years in Ashantee_, p. 50. Kålund, 'Skandinavische Verhältnisse,' in Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, ii. pt. ii. 227 (ancient Scandinavians).]

[Footnote 179: Vendîdâd, viii. 14 sqq. Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxxiv. sq.]

[Footnote 180: Trumbull, op. cit. p. 24.]

[Footnote 181: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 644.]

[Footnote 182: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 42 sqq.]

[Footnote 183: Idem, quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 341 sq. Among the Bhuiyâr, a Dravidian tribe in South Mirzapur, each house has two doors, one of which is only used by menstruous women; and when such a woman has to quit the house "she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees so as to avoid polluting the house thatch by her touch" (Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, ii. 87). Among the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia meat was only taken into the hunting lodge through a hole in the back of the structure, because the common door was used by women and women were regarded as unclean (Teit, 'Thompson Indians,' in Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 'Anthropology,' i. 347). In other instances ordinary people are prohibited from using a door through which a sacred person has passed, obviously because contact with his sanctity is looked upon as dangerous. In some of the South Sea Islands, where the first-born, whether male or female, was especially sacred, no one else was allowed to pass by the door through which he or she entered the paternal dwelling (Gill, Life in the Southern Isles, p. 46). "In some parts of the Pacific, the door through which the king or queen passed in opening a temple was shut up, and ever after made sacred" (Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 328). Ezekiel (xliv. 2 sq.) represents the Lord as saying:--"This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut. It is for the prince; . . . he shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate, and shall go out by the way of the same." Among the Arabs in olden days those who returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca entered their houses not by the door but by a hole made in the back wall (Palmer, in Sacred Books of the East, vi. 27, n. 1). This practice was forbidden by Muhammed (Koran, ii. 185).]

[Footnote 184: Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 76 sqq.]

[Footnote 185: It should be added, however, that. Sir J. G. Frazer's important essay on 'Burial Customs' was published many years ago and therefore perhaps does not exactly represent the author's present views on the subject.]

It is obvious that the beliefs held as regards the character, activity, and polluting influence of the dead greatly affect the conduct of the survivors. They are {539} naturally anxious to gain the favour of the disembodied soul, to avert its ill-will, to keep it at a distance, and to avoid the defilement of death. Self-interest is often a conspicuous motive for acts and omissions which are regarded as duties to the dead, and prudence also has a very large share in their being enjoined as obligatory. This is obviously true of the offerings made to the dead. The Thompson River Indians of British Columbia threw some food on the ground near the grave of the deceased, "that he might not visit the house in search of food, causing sickness to the people."[186] Among the Iroquois, "on the death of a nursing child two pieces of cloth are saturated with the mother's milk and placed in the hands of the dead child so that its spirit may not return to haunt the bereaved mother."[187] The Negroes of Accra, when asked why they slaughtered animals at the tombs of their departed friends, answered that they did so in order to prevent the ghosts from walking.[188] The Monbuttu place some oil and other victuals in the little hut which is erected for the dead in the forest, so that his spirit shall not return to his old home in search of food.[189] For the same reason the Bataks of Sumatra put various things into the graves of their deceased friends, ask the dead to be quiet and not to long for the company of the living, and finish their address with the words, "Here you have still some sirih and tobacco, and every year, at harvest time, we shall give you some rice."[190] Among the Chuvashes the son says to his departed father, "We remember you with a feast, here are bread and different kinds of food for you, everything you have before you, do not come to us."[191] It is considered particularly dangerous to keep back and make use of articles which belonged to the dead. The Gypsies burn on the grave all those chattels which the deceased was in the habit of using during his lifetime, "because his soul would otherwise {540} return to torment his relatives and claim back his property."[192] A Saora gave the following reason for the custom of burning all the belongings of a dead person:--"If we do not burn these things with the body, the Kulba (soul) will come and ask us for them and trouble us."[193] The Kafirs believe that, after his death, "a man's personality haunts his possessions."[194] Among the Brazilian Tupinambas "whoever happened to have any thing which had belonged to the dead produced it, that it might be buried with him, lest he should come and claim it."[195] When a Navaho Indian dies within a house the rafters are pulled down over the remains and the place is usually set on fire; after that nothing would induce a Navaho to touch a piece of the wood or even approach the immediate vicinity of the place, the shades of the dead being regarded "as inclined to resent any intrusion or the taking of any liberties with them or their belongings."[196] The Greenlanders, as soon as a man is dead, "throw out every thing which has belonged to him; otherwise they would be polluted, and their lives rendered unfortunate. The house is cleared of all its movables till evening, when the smell of the corpse has passed away."[197]

[Footnote 186: Teit, loc. cit. p. 329.]

[Footnote 187: Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ii. 69.]

[Footnote 188: Monrad, op. cit. p. 26.]

[Footnote 189: Burrows, op. cit. p. 103.]

[Footnote 190: von Brenner, op. cit. p. 234 sqq.]

[Footnote 191: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 123 sq.]

[Footnote 192: von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 100.]

[Footnote 193: Fawcett, op. cit. p. 47.]

[Footnote 194: Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 83.]

[Footnote 195: Southey, op. cit. i. 248. Cf. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 502 (Bororó).]

[Footnote 196: Mindeleff, 'Navaho Houses,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xvii. 487.]

[Footnote 197: Cranz, op. cit. i. 217.]

The fear of the dead has also taught men to abstain from robbing or violating their tombs. The Omahas believe that, if anybody touched an article of food exposed at a grave, "the ghost would snatch away the food and paralyse the mouth of the thief, and twist his face out of shape for the rest of his life; or else he would be pursued by the ghost, and food would lose its taste, and hunger ever after haunt the offender."[198] The Brazilian Coroados "avoid disturbing the repository of the dead, for fear they should appear to them and torment them."[199] {541} The Maoris suppose that the violation of a burial place would bring disease and death on the criminal.[200] The extreme dislike of the Chinese to disturbing a grave is based on the supposition that the spirit of the person buried will haunt and cause ill-luck or death to the disturber.[201] According to the popular beliefs of the Magyars, he who seizes upon anything belonging to a tomb, even if it were only a flower, will be unhappy for the rest of his life.[202] The Rumanians of Transylvania think that a person who picks a flower which grows on a grave will die in consequence, and that he who smells at such a flower will lose his sense of smell.[203]

[Footnote 198: La Flesche, 'Death and Funeral Customs among the Omahas,' in Jour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 11. Cf. Reid, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. iii. 112 (Chippewas).]

[Footnote 199: von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 251.]

[Footnote 200: Polack, op. cit. i. 112.]

[Footnote 201: Dennys, op. cit. p. 26. de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. 446 sq.]

[Footnote 202: von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Magyaren, p. 135. Cf. Idem, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96 sq.]

[Footnote 203: Prexl, 'Geburts- und Todtengebräuche der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen,' in Globus, lvii. 30.]

The transgression of ancestral custom, as we have already seen, is supposed to be punished by the spirits of the dead; and the sacredness of a will largely springs from superstitious fear. The South Slavonian belief that, if a son does not fulfil the last will of his father the soul of the father will curse him from the grave,[204] has its counterpart in the denunciatory clause in Anglo-Saxon landbooks, which usually curses all and singular who attack the donee's title.[205]

[Footnote 204: Supra, i. 624.]

[Footnote 205: Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. ii. 251 sq.]

The custom of praising the dead, again, is mainly flattery, and the lamentations over them are not altogether sincere.[206] By their excessive demonstrations of grief the Andaman Islanders hope to conciliate the spirits of the departed, and to be preserved from many misfortunes which might otherwise befall them.[207] The Central Australian native fears "that, unless a sufficient amount of grief be displayed, he will be harmed by the offended Ulthana or spirit of the dead man."[208] The Angmagsaliks {542} on the East Coast of Greenland say that they cry and groan and perform other mourning rites "in order to prevent the dead from getting angry."[209] But the loud wailing of mourners may also, like the shouting after a death,[210] be intended to drive away the ghost, or perhaps death itself.

[Footnote 206: See Gibbs, loc. cit. p. 205 (tribes of Western Washington and North-western Oregon); Wied-Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 56 (Botocudos).]

[Footnote 207: Man, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 145.]

[Footnote 208: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 510.]

[Footnote 209: Holm, 'Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,' in Meddelelser om Grønland, x. 107.]

[Footnote 210: Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 506. Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 432, n. 2.]

Fear is certainly a very common motive for funeral and mourning rites which have been interpreted as duties to the dead. This is the case with the various methods of disposing of the corpse. Thus the custom of leaving it as food for beasts of prey[211] is, in some instances at least, deliberately practised for the purpose of preventing the ghost from walking. The Herero who accompanied Chapman said of two of their sick comrades who formed part of the company, "You must throw them away, and let the wolves eat them; then they won't come and bother us."[212] Cremation, also, has frequently been resorted to as a means of protecting the living from unwelcome visits of the dead, or, as the case may be, of effectually getting rid of the contagion of death.[213] The Vedic people, while burning the corpses of their dead, cried aloud, "Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men."[214] In Northern India the corpses of all low caste people are either cremated or buried face downwards, in order to prevent the evil spirit from escaping and troubling its neighbours.[215] The Nâyars of Malabar not only believe that the collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the dead man gives peace to his spirit, but, "what is more important, the pacified spirit will not thereafter injure the living members of the Taravâd (house or family), cause miscarriage {543} to the women, possess the men, as with an evil spirit, and so on."[216] In Tibet a ghost which makes its presence felt in dreams or by causing deliriousness or temporary insanity is disposed of by cremation.[217] In his description of the Savage Islanders, Mr. Thomson tells us of a mother who destroyed her own daughter's grave by fire in order to burn the spirit which was afflicting her.[218] Among the ancient Scandinavians the bodies of persons who were believed to walk after death were dug up from their graves and burned.[219] And exactly the same is done in Albania to this day.[220]

[Footnote 211: For this custom see also Murdoch, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 424 sq. (Point Barrow Eskimo); Nordenskiöld, Vegas färd kring Asien och Europa, ii. 93 (Chukchi); Andersson, Notes on Travel in South Africa, p. 234 (Ovambo).]

[Footnote 212: Chapman, _Travels in the Interior of South Africa_, ii. 282.]

[Footnote 213: Cf. Rohde, op. cit. p. 28 sqq. (ancient Greeks); Preuss, op. cit. p. 294.]

[Footnote 214: Rig-Veda, x. 18. 1.]

[Footnote 215: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 269.]

[Footnote 216: Fawcett, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iii. 251. See also Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,'ibid. iv. 71.]

[Footnote 217: Waddell, op. cit. p. 498.]

[Footnote 218: Thomson, Savage Island, p. 134.]

[Footnote 219: Kålund, loc. cit. p. 227.]

[Footnote 220: von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 163.]

Burial itself has served a similar purpose.[221] According to the Danish traveller Monrad, the Negroes of Accra expressly believe that by covering the body of a dead person with earth they keep the ghost from walking and causing trouble to the survivors; and he adds that exactly the same superstition prevails in Jutland in Denmark.[222] This belief is also preserved in the Swedish word for committing a corpse to the earth, jordfästa, which literally means "to fasten to the earth." In Gothland, in Sweden, there was an old tradition of a man called Takstein who in his lifetime was overbearing and cruel and after his death haunted the living, in consequence of which "a wizard finally earth-fastened him in such a manner that he afterwards lay quiet."[223] But burial has often been supplemented by other precautions against the return of the ghost. Högström says that the Laplanders carefully wrapped up their dead in cloth so as to prevent the soul from slipping away.[224] The practice of placing logs or stones immediately over the corpse may have a similar origin; in some Queensland tribes, when an individual has been killed by the whole tribe in punishment for some {544} serious crime, boomerangs are substituted for the ordinary logs, evidently for fear of the ghost.[225] The Chuvashes, again, put two stakes across the coffin of a dead man for the purpose of preventing him from lifting up the cover.[226] Graves are often provided with mounds, tombstones, or enclosures in order to keep the dead from walking.[227] The Omahas raise no mound over a man who has been killed by lightning, but bury him face downwards and with the soles of his feet split, in the belief that he will then go to the spirit-land without giving further trouble to the living.[228] The Savage Islanders pile heavy stones upon the grave to keep the ghost down.[229] The Cheremises believe that the ghosts cannot step over the fence-poles with which they surround the graves.[230] When ceremonies like that of striking the air at a funeral or the ringing of bells are represented as means of keeping off evil spirits from the dead, we have reason to suspect that their original object was to keep off the ghost from the living. At Central Australian funerals women beat the air with the palms of their hands for the express purpose of driving the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to haunt, and the men beat the air with their spear-throwers.[231] The Bondeis of East Africa frighten the ghosts by beating drums.[232] And at Port Moresby, in New Guinea, when the church bell was first used, the natives thanked the missionaries for having driven off numerous bands of ghosts.[233]

[Footnote 221: Cf. Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 64 sq.; Preuss, op. cit. p. 292 sq.]

[Footnote 222: Monrad, op. cit. p. 13.]

[Footnote 223: Läffler, Den gottländska Taksteinar-sägnen, p. 5.]

[Footnote 224: Högström, Beskrifning öfver de til Sveriges Krona lydande Lapmarker, p. 207.]

[Footnote 225: Roth, op. cit. p. 165.]

[Footnote 226: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 121.]

[Footnote 227: Cf. Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 65 sq.; Preuss, op. cit. p. 293.]

[Footnote 228: Dorsey, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 420. La Flesche, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 11.]

[Footnote 229: Thomson, Savage Island, p. 52.]

[Footnote 230: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 122.]

[Footnote 231: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.]

[Footnote 232: Dale, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxv. 238.]

[Footnote 233: Chalmers and Gill, _Work and Adventure in New Guinea_, p. 260.]

That the mourning fast is essentially a precaution taken by the survivors, and not a tribute to the dead, is obvious from what has been said in a previous chapter.[234] When mourners mutilate, cut, or beat themselves, the original object of their doing so seems often to be to ward off the {545} contagion of death.[235] Among the Bedouins of Morocco women at funerals not only scratch their faces, but also rub the wounds with cow-dung, and cow-dung is regarded as a means of purification. The mourning customs of painting the body and of assuming a special costume have been explained as attempts on the part of the survivors to disguise themselves;[236] but the latter custom may also have originated in the idea that a mourner is more or less polluted for a certain period and that therefore a dress worn by him then, being a seat of contagion, could not be used afterwards. Egede writes of the Greenlanders, "If they have happened to touch a corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews."[237] There can, finally, be no doubt that the widespread prohibition of mentioning the name of a dead person[238] does not in the first instance arise from respect for the departed, but from fear. To name him is to summon him; the Indians of Washington Territory even change their own names when a relative dies, because "they think the spirits of the dead will come back if they hear the same name called that they were accustomed to hear {546} before death."[239] But apart from this, a dead man's name itself is probably felt to be defiling, or at all events produces an uncanny association of thought, which even among ourselves makes many people reluctant to mention it.[240] And to do so may also be a wrong to other persons who would be endangered thereby. Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, to mention a dead man before his relatives is a dreadful offence, which is often punished even with death.[241]

[Footnote 234: Supra, ii. 302 sqq.]

[Footnote 235: Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 302.]

[Footnote 236: Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. 73. Idem, 'Folk-Lore in the Old Testament,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 110.]

[Footnote 237: Egede, op. cit. p. 197.]

[Footnote 238: Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_, p. 144. Nyrop, 'Navnets magt,' in _Mindre afhandlinger udgivne af det philologisk-historiske samfund_, pp. 147-151, 190 sq. and passim. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 421 sqq. Clodd, Tom Tit Tot, p. 166 sqq. Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 230 sq. (Greenlanders). Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 84 (North American Indians). Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 462. Batchelor, Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 242. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 27, 28, 262 sq. (Samoyedes and shamanistic peoples in Siberia). Jackson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Rivers, Todas, p. 625 sqq. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces_, i. 11 (Agariya, a Dravidian tribe), von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96 (Gypsies). Yseldijk, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 42. (Kotting, in the island of Flores). Roth, _North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 164. Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 498. Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 82. Thornton, in Hill and Thornton, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 7. Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 249 (Kurnai). Curr, Squatting in Victoria, p. 272 (Bangerang). Hinde, _op. cit._ p. 50 (Masai). Duveyrier, Exploration du Sahara, p. 415 (Touareg). Werner, 'Custom of "Hlonipa,"' in _Jour. African Soc._ 1905, April, p. 346 (Zulus).]

[Footnote 239: Swan, Residence in Washington Territory, p. 189.]

[Footnote 240: I had much difficulty in inducing my teacher in Shel[h.]a, a Berber from the Great Atlas Mountains, to tell me the equivalent for "illness" in his own language; and when he finally did so, he spat immediately afterwards. Among the Central Australian Arunta the older men will not look at the photograph of a deceased person (Gillen, 'Aborigines of the McDonnell Ranges,' in Report of the Horn Expedition, iv. 'Anthropology,' p. 168).]

[Footnote 241: Simons, 'Exploration of the Goajira Peninsula,' in Proceed. Roy. Geograph. Soc. N. S. vii. 791.]

By all this I certainly do not mean to assert that the funeral and mourning customs to which I have just referred have exclusively or in every case originated in fear of the dead or of the pollution of death. Burial may also be genuinely intended to protect the body from beasts or birds; and the same may be the case with mounds, tombstones, and enclosures.[242] Some savages are reported to burn the dead in order to prevent their bodies from falling into the hands of enemies,[243] which might be bad both for the dead and for their friends, as charms might be made from the corpses.[244] Moreover, cremation does away with the slow process of transformation to which a dead body is naturally subject, and this process is regarded not only as a danger to the living but also as painful to the deceased himself.[245] The same object may be achieved by exposing the corpse to wild animals. And we should also remember that the putrefactive process {547} itself, whether accompanied by any superstitious ideas or not, is a sufficient motive for disposing of the dead body in some way or other--either by burial or cremation or exposure; and if one method is held objectionable another will be resorted to. Among the Masai the custom of throwing away corpses is said to spring from the notion that to bury them would be to poison the soil;[246] and the Zoroastrian law enjoining the exposure of the dead was closely connected with the sacredness ascribed to fire and earth and the consequent dread of polluting them.

[Footnote 242: Cranz, op. cit. i. 217 (Greenlanders). Turner, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow, ibid. i. 102 (Wichita Indians). Dunbar, in _Magazine of American History_, viii. 734 (Pawnee Indians). Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 87.]

[Footnote 243: Hyades and Deniker, op. cit. vii. 379 (Fuegians). Preuss, op. cit. p. 310 (Seminole Indians of Florida).]

[Footnote 244: Ralph, quoted by Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 437 (Haidahs of British Columbia).]

[Footnote 245: See Hertz, loc. cit. p. 71.]

[Footnote 246: Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 259.]

Again, as for the mutilations and self-inflicted wounds which accompany funerals, I have suggested in a previous chapter that they may be partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul with human blood;[247] or, as Dr. Hirn observes, they may be instinctive efforts to procure that relief from overpowering feelings which is afforded by pain and the subsequent exhaustion.[248] The reluctance to name the dead may, in some measure, be traced to a natural unwillingness in his old friends to revive past sorrows.[249] And with reference to the mourning apparel, Dr. de Groot believes--if rightly or wrongly I am not in a position to decide--that, so far as China is concerned, it originated in the custom of sacrificing to the dead the clothes on one's own back. He thinks that this explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the age of Confucius it was customary for the mourners to throw off their clothes as far as decency allowed when the corpse was being dressed.[250]

[Footnote 247: Supra, i. 476.]

[Footnote 248: Hirn, Origins of Art, p. 66 sq.]

[Footnote 249: Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 249 (Kurnai). Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 422.]

[Footnote 250: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 475 sq.]

There are several reasons why practices connected with death which originally sprang from self-regarding motives have come to be enjoined as duties. We have first to remember the various factors mentioned above[251] which tend to make self-regarding conduct a matter of moral concern. {548} But in this case the transition from the prudential to the obligatory has been much facilitated by the circumstance that all the acts which a person's self-interest induces him to perform or to abstain from have direct reference to another individual, and, indeed, to an individual who is supposed to reward benefits bestowed upon him or at all events to resent injuries and neglect. These punishments and rewards sent by the departed soul are all the more readily recognised to be well deserved, as the claims of the dead are similar in nature to those of the living and are at the same time in some degree supported by sympathetic feelings in the survivors. Nor is it difficult to explain why even such practices as are not originally supposed to comfort the dead have assumed the character of duties towards them. The dead are not only beings whom it is dangerous to offend and useful to please, but they are also very easily duped. No wonder therefore that the living are anxious to put the most amiable interpretation upon their conduct, trying to persuade the ghost, as also one another, that they do what they do for his benefit, not for their own. It is better for him to have rest in his grave than to wander about on earth unhappy and homeless. It is better for him to enjoy the heat of the flames than to suffer from the cold of an arctic climate. It is better for him to be eaten by an animal--say, a beautiful dog or a hyæna sent by God--than to lie and rot in the open air. And all the mourning customs, what are they if not tokens of grief? Moreover, if the corpse is not properly disposed of or any funeral or mourning rite calculated to keep off the ghost is not observed, the dead man will easily do harm to the survivors. And does not this indicate that they have been neglectful of their duties to him?

[Footnote 251: Supra, ii. 266 sq.]

The mixture of sympathy and fear which is at the bottom of the duties to the dead accounts for the fact that these duties are rarely extended to strangers. A departed stranger is not generally an object of either pity or fear. He expects attention from his own people only, he haunts his own home. But he may of course be dangerous to {549} anybody who directly offends him, for instance by inflicting an injury upon his body, or to people who live in the vicinity of his grave. We are told that the Angami Nagas bestow as much care on the tombs of foes who have fallen near their villages as on those of their own warriors.[252] So also the differences in the treatment of the dead which depend upon age, sex, and social position are no doubt closely connected with variations in the feelings of sympathy, respect, or fear,[253] although in many cases we are unable to explain those differences in detail. Among the Australian natives women and children are said to be interred with little ceremony because they are held to be very inferior to men while alive and consequently are not much feared after death;[254] and if in Eastern Central Africa the attention usually bestowed upon the dead is not extended to children which die when four or five days old, the reason seems to be that such children are hardly supposed to possess a soul.[255] We may assume that the special treatment to which the bodies of criminals are subject is due not only to indignation but, in some instances at least, to fear of their ghosts. And we have noticed above that suicides, murdered persons, and those struck with lightning are sometimes left unburied because no one dares to interfere with their bodies, or perhaps in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead.[256]

[Footnote 252: Prain, 'Angami Nagas,' in Revue coloniale internationale, v. 493.]

[Footnote 253: Cf. Hertz, loc. cit. pp. 122, 132 sqq.]

[Footnote 254: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 89.]

[Footnote 255: Macdonald, Africana, i. 68.]

[Footnote 256: Supra, ii. 238 sq.]

It should finally be noticed that the duties to the departed become less stringent as time goes on. As Dr. Hertz has recently shown, the fear of the dead is greatest as long as the process of decomposition lasts and till the second funeral is performed, and this ceremony brings the period of mourning to an end.[257] Moreover, the dead are gradually less and less thought of, they appear less frequently in dreams and visions, the affection for them fades away, and, being forgotten, they are no longer feared. The Chinese say that ghosts are much more {550} liable to appear very shortly after death, than at any other period.[258] The natives of Australia are only afraid of the spirits of men who have lately died.[259] In the course of time savages also become more willing to speak of their dead.[260] But whilst the large bulk of disembodied souls sooner or later lose their individuality and dwindle into insignificance or sink into the limbo of All Souls, it may be that some of them escape this fate, and, instead of being ignored, are raised to the rank of gods.

[Footnote 257: Hertz, loc. cit. passim.]

[Footnote 258: Dennys, op. cit. p. 76.]

[Footnote 259: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 44, 87. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 279 (Northern Queensland aborigines).]

[Footnote 260: Tout, 'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 138. Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 462. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 431 sqq.]

* * * * *

Progress in intellectual culture has a tendency to affect the notions of death. The change involved in it appears greater. The soul, if still thought to survive the death of the body, is more distinctly separated from it; it is rid of all sensuous desires, as also of all earthly interests. Duties to the dead which arose from the old ideas may still be maintained, but their meaning is changed.

Thus the funeral sacrifice may be continued as a mark of respect or affection. In Melanesia, for instance, at the death-meals which follow upon funerals or begin before them, and which still form one of the principal institutions of the natives, a piece of food is put aside for the dead. "It is readily denied now," says Dr. Codrington, "that the dead . . . are thought to come and eat the food, which they say is given as a friendly remembrance only, and in the way of associating together those whom death has separated."[261] In many cases the offerings made to the dead have become alms given to the poor, just as has been the case with sacrifices offered to gods;[262] and this almsgiving is undoubtedly looked upon as a duty to the dead. Among the Omahas goods are collected from the kindred of the dead between the death and the funeral, and when the body has been deposited in the grave they {551} are brought forth and equally divided among the poor who are assembled on the spot.[263] At a Hindu funeral in Sindh, on the road to the burning place, the relatives of the dead throw dry dates into the air over the corpse; these are considered as a kind of alms and are left to the poor.[264] Among some peoples of Malabar, at the çráddha, or yearly anniversary of a death, not less than three Brahmins are well fed and presented with money and cloth;[265] and according to Brahmanism the çráddha is "a debt which is transferred from one generation to another, and on the payment of which depends the happiness of the dead in the next life."[266] Among Muhammedans alms, generally consisting of food, are distributed in connection with a death in order to confer merits upon the deceased.[267] Thus in Morocco bread or dried fruits are given to the poor who are assembled at the grave-side on the day of the funeral, as also on the third and sometimes on the fortieth day after it, on the tenth day of Mu[h.]arram, and in many parts of the country on other feast-days as well, when the graves are visited by relatives of the dead. These alms are obviously survivals of offerings to the dead themselves. While residing among the Bedouins of Dukkâla, I was told that if the funeral meal were omitted the dead man's mouth would be filled with earth; and it is a common custom among the Moors that, if a dead person appears in a dream complaining of hunger or thirst, food or drink is at once given to some poor people. Among the Christians, in former days, alms were distributed in the church when, soon after a death or on the anniversary of a death, the sacrifice of the mass was offered; and alms were also given at funerals and at graves, in the hope that their merit might be of advantage to the deceased.[268] At Mykonos, in the Cyclades, on some fixed days after the {552} burial a dish consisting of boiled wheat adorned with sugar plums or other delicacy is put on the tomb, and finally distributed to the poor at the church door;[269] and in some parts of Russia the people still believe that if the usual alms are not given at a funeral the dead man's soul will reveal itself to his relatives in the form of a moth flying about the flame of a candle.[270] The supposed conferring of merits upon the dead and the prayers on their behalf, so common both in Christianity and Muhammedanism, are the last remains of a series of customs by means of which the living have endeavoured to benefit their departed friends.

[Footnote 261: Codrington, Melanesians, p. 271 sq. Cf. ibid. p. 128.]

[Footnote 262: Supra, i. 565 sqq.]

[Footnote 263: La Flesche, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 8 sqq.]

[Footnote 264: Burton, Sindh, p. 350.]

[Footnote 265: Fawcett, 'Notes on some of the People of Malabar,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iii. 71.]

[Footnote 266: Barth, Religions of India, p. 52.]

[Footnote 267: Garnett, Women of Turkey, ii. 496. Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 530. Certeux and Carnoy, L'Algérie traditionelle, p. 220.]

[Footnote 268: Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit, i. 281.]

[Footnote 269: Bent, Cyclades, p. 221 sq.]

[Footnote 270: Ralston, op. cit. p. 117.]

But even when the dead are no longer believed to be in need of human care, nay, though death be thought to put an end to existence, there are still duties, if not to the dead, at all events to those who were once alive. A person may be wronged by an act which he can no longer feel. There are rights that are in force not only during his lifetime but after his death. A given promise is not buried with him to whom it was made. A dead man's will is binding. His memory is protected against calumny. These rights have the same foundation as all other rights: the feelings of the person himself and the claims of others that his feelings shall be respected. We have wishes with regard to the future when we live no more. We take an interest in persons and things that survive us. We desire to leave behind a spotless name. And the sympathy felt for us by our fellow men will last when we ourselves are gone.